The Morgesons

by Elizabeth Stoddard and Anna Todd

Book Overview

Elizabeth Stoddard combines the narrative style of the popular nineteenth-century male-centered bildungsroman with the conventions of women's romantic fiction in this revolutionary exploration of the conflict between a woman's instinct, passion, and will, and the social taboos, family allegiances, and traditional New England restraint that inhibit her. Set in a small seaport town (1862), The Morgesons is the dramatic story of Cassandra Morgeson's...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140436510
• ISBN13: 9780140436518
• Release Date: September 1997
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.1" x 7.7"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

Weird but good

The Morgesons is a magnificently strange book that takes the conventions of the 19th-century coming-of-age novel & turns them inside out. It comes so close to being a deliciously cosy, quasi-gothic, read that you find yourself wondering whether you're imagining the peculiarities-- & perhaps they are only the natural consequences of transplanting this sort of novel into an American setting, where instead of sheepfolds & Anglican churchiness, barren Cape Cod coastline and cold Calvinism are the order of the day. Obsession with inheritance & the family line & that terrible 19th century question: what should a woman do? runs through the book, whose coldness occasionally gives way to flaring episodes of violence and passion.