Article
Ella Rhoads Higginson, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and Pacific Northwest Women’s Literary Regionalism
Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers
(2014)
Abstract
This essay uncovers the ways once-celebrated Pacific Northwest author Ella Rhoads Higginson ([1862]-1940) uses her now forgotten short story, “The Stubbornness of Uriah Slater” (1899), to resituate and rewrite Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s well-known story “The Revolt of ‘Mother.’” In so doing, Higginson establishes a pivotal association between women’s literary regionalism of the Pacific Northwest and that of postbellum New England. Laffrado argues that in rewriting “The Revolt of ‘Mother’” Higginson activates a cross-regionalist literary conversation regarding the social and material conditions of US white women. Additionally, this revision allows Higginson to employ the New England of “The Revolt of ‘Mother’” as a recognized literary regional norm against which to delineate more precisely how, in contrast, the Pacific Northwest region might operate as a literary location. Higginson’s use of “The Revolt of ‘Mother’” extends well beyond revision, however, as she enlists the story as a means to push against and reshape established contours of women’s literary regionalism. “The Stubbornness of Uriah Slater” is thus important because it prompts a critical re-view of late-nineteenth-century US women’s regionalism by appending the Pacific Northwest to other literary regions of the nation, thereby interrupting the dominance of New England in women’s literary regionalism.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2014
Publisher Statement
Legacy is published twice a year by the University of Nebraska Press and is available online through Project MUSE or through university electronic journal websites.
Legacy is the official journal of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers.
Citation Information
Laura Laffrado. "Ella Rhoads Higginson, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and Pacific Northwest Women’s Literary Regionalism" Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers Vol. 31 Iss. 2 (2014) p. 281 - 288 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/laura-laffrado/4/