St. Elmo or Saved At Last is a novel by American author Augusta Jane Evans published in 1866. Featuring the sexual tension between the protagonist St. Elmo, a cynical man, and the heroine Edna Earl, a beautiful and devout girl, the novel was about the agency of women who could save men from apostasy. [1] The novel became one of the most popular novels of the 19th century. The novel sold a million copies within four months of its publication.
Augusta Jane Evans (May 8, 1835 – May 9, 1909) finished her celebrated novel at El Dorado, a historical home in Columbus, Georgia. In 1878, the home was purchased by Captain and Mrs. James J. Slade who changed its name to St. Elmo in honor of the novel which it had inspired. [2]
She wrote in the domestic, sentimental style of the Victorian Age. Critics have praised the intellectual competence of her female characters, even though her heroines eventually succumb to traditional values. The book opens with a quote attributed to John Ruskin:
Ah! The true rule is —a true wife in her husband's house is his servant; it is in his heart that she is queen. Whatever of the best he can conceive, it is her part to be; all that is dark in him she must purge into purity; all that is failing in him she must strengthen into truth; from her, through all the world's clamor, he must win his praise; in her through all the world's warfare, he must find his peace.
She has been described as an antifeminist. [3] In St. Elmo Wilson describes feminists as "unamiable and wretched wives" and calls them the "embittered, disappointed old maids of New England". [4]
Recent feminist scholars have noted the complexity in categorizing her work, reading the typical marriage themes of the Victorian novel superficially, and giving more weight to the intellectual capability of her female characters. [5] Of St. Elmo one critic maintained, "the trouble with the heroine of St. Elmo was that she swallowed an unabridged dictionary." Wilson's works are considered to fall within the genre of "domestic fiction", and so have never been included in the literary canon because that genre is not considered worth including. [4]
Wilson's female characters diverged from the Victorian ideal. Women's lives changed in the aftermath of the Civil War, and during the War, they had assumed responsibilities outside the home. Evans herself had worked at a Confederate hospital in Mobile, Alabama over the objections of her male relatives. [6] Evans likely had this post-bellum context in mind. Edna, the heroine in St. Elmo's was responsible and educated. Although Edna was not fully confined to the domestic sphere, Wilson's feminine ideal was not the suffragette style of feminism, which did not appeal to all classes of women in 1886. Critics, especially modern feminists, have viewed Edna's marriage as a disappointing conclusion to the character's otherwise spirited defense of women's intellect and agency. [7]
Some of the novel's controversial passages were removed from the New York Grosset and Dunlap edition (1896) of the book. These include passages on feminism and the "woman's sphere" from Chapter XXVI. Some of the content casts women of the French Revolution in a negative light, calling them "perverted" and accusing feminists of criminal acts. Twelve lines from Edna's speech were excised including "utter ignorance is infinitely preferable to erudite unwomanliness". Another forty-five lines were removed including: "I never hear that word 'equality' without a shudder". It remains a mystery why these parts of the text found in the W. Nicholson & Sons edition were left out of the New York edition. [8]
Her books were banned by the American Library Association in 1881: "by reason of sensation or immoral qualities". [1]
The novel St. Elmo was frequently adapted for both the stage and screen. It inspired the naming of towns, hotels, steamboats, and a cigar brand.
St. Elmo, Texas located in Freestone County near Winkler (Navarro County) southeast of Corsicana on the southside of Richland-Chambers Resivor, is believed to be named after the book. St. Elmo School, though first unnamed and founded around 1850, took on the novel's name around 1875 when a wood-framed, one-room schoolhouse was first constructed in the rural setting.
The book's heroine Edna Earl became the namesake of Eudora Welty's heroine (Edna Earle Ponder) in The Ponder Heart published in 1954.
The novel also inspired a parody of itself called St. Twel'mo, or the Cuneiform Cyclopedist of Chattanooga (1867) by Charles Henry Webb. [9]
A film and website on Augusta Evans Wilson entitled The Passion of Miss Augusta [10] was produced by Alabama filmmaker Robert Clem and aired on public television in 2016, the 150th anniversary of the publication of St. Elmo.
The novel has inspired the production of a number of films. These include in chronological order:
Feminist film theory is a theoretical film criticism derived from feminist politics and feminist theory influenced by second-wave feminism and brought about around the 1970s in the United States. With the advancements in film throughout the years feminist film theory has developed and changed to analyse the current ways of film and also go back to analyse films past. Feminists have many approaches to cinema analysis, regarding the film elements analyzed and their theoretical underpinnings.
Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels include the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big (1924), Show Boat, Cimarron, Giant and Ice Palace (1958), which also received a film adaptation in 1960. She helped adapt her short story "Old Man Minick", published in 1922, into a play (Minick) and it was thrice adapted to film, in 1925 as the silent film Welcome Home, in 1932 as The Expert, and in 1939 as No Place to Go.
Jane Eyre is a novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published under her pen name "Currer Bell" on 19 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York. Jane Eyre is a bildungsroman that follows the experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr Rochester, the brooding master of Thornfield Hall.
A governess is a term for a woman employed as a private tutor, who teaches and trains a child or children in their home. A governess often lives in the same residence as the children she is teaching. In contrast to a nanny, the primary role of a governess is teaching, rather than meeting the physical needs of children; hence a governess is usually in charge of school-aged children, rather than babies.
The damsel in distress is a narrative device in which one or more men must rescue a woman who has been kidnapped or placed in other peril. Kinship, love, lust or a combination of those motivate the male protagonist to initiate the narrative.
The Awakening is a novel by Kate Chopin, first published in 1899. Set in New Orleans and on the Louisiana Gulf coast at the end of the 19th century, the plot centers on Edna Pontellier and her struggle between her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century American South. It is one of the earlier American novels that focuses on women's issues utilizing narrative techniques. It is also widely seen as a landmark work of early feminism, generating a mixed reaction from contemporary readers and critics.
The St. Elmo Historic District, or St. Elmo for short, is a neighborhood in the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee. It is situated in the southernmost part of Hamilton County within the valley of Lookout Mountain below the part of the Tennessee River known as Moccasin Bend. St Elmo is at the crossroads of two ancient Indian trails, and was first occupied by Native American hunters and gatherers in the Woodland period, then agricultural Mississippians, including Euchee and Muscogee, and for a brief period between 1776 and 1786, the Cherokees in a community called Lookout Town. St. Elmo became part of the city of Chattanooga when it was annexed in September 1929.
Augusta Jane Wilson, was an American author of Southern literature and a supporter of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Her books were banned by the American Library Association in 1881. She was the first woman to earn US$100,000 through her writing.
The Watsons is an abandoned novel by Jane Austen, probably begun about 1803. There have been a number of arguments advanced as to why she did not complete it, and other authors have since attempted the task. A continuation by Austen's niece was published in 1850. The manuscript fragment itself was published in 1871. Further completions and adaptations of the story have continued to the present day.
Jane Eyre is the fictional heroine and the titular protagonist in Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel of the same name. The story follows Jane's infancy and childhood as an orphan, her employment first as a teacher and then as a governess, and her romantic involvement with her employer, the mysterious and moody Edward Rochester. Jane is noted by critics for her dependability, strong mindedness, and individualism. The author deliberately created Jane as an unglamorous figure, in contrast to conventional heroines of fiction, and possibly part-autobiographical.
Domestic realism normally refers to the genre of 19th-century fictional works about the daily lives of ordinary Victorian women. This body of writing is also known as "sentimental fiction" or "woman's fiction". The genre is mainly reflected in the novel though short-stories and non-fiction works such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Our Country Neighbors" and The New Housekeeper's Manual written by Stowe and her sister-in-law Catharine Beecher are works of domestic realism.
Georgia Cottage, also known as the Augusta Evans Wilson House, is a historic residence in Mobile, Alabama, United States. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 14, 1972, based on its association with Augusta Jane Evans. She was one of the most popular American novelists of the nineteenth century and the first female author in the United States to earn over $100,000 for her work, but has been largely forgotten in recent times.
St. Elmo is a 1923 American silent drama film directed by Jerome Storm. Distributed by Fox Film Corporation, the film is based on the 1867 novel of the same name written by Augusta Jane Evans.
Saint Elmo or St. Elmo may refer to:
St. Elmo is a 1923 British silent drama film directed by Rex Wilson and starring Shayle Gardner, Gabrielle Gilroy and Madge Tree. It was an adaptation of the 1866 novel St. Elmo by Augusta Jane Evans. An American adaptation St. Elmo was released the same year.
St. Elmo is a 1914 American silent drama film produced by the Balboa Amusement Producing Company and distributed by William Fox's Box Office Attractions Company. It was the first feature-length film adaptation of Augusta Jane Evans's 1866 novel of the same name. The story follows the life of the title character, who kills his cousin over the love of Agnes, falls from grace, and eventually finds redemption and love with Edna. It is disputed who directed the film; many sources credit Bertram Bracken, while others list St. Elmo as J. Gordon Edwards's directorial debut.
Life's Shop Window is a 1914 American silent drama film directed by J. Gordon Edwards and starring Claire Whitney and Stuart Holmes. It is a film adaptation of the 1907 novel of the same name by Annie Sophie Cory. The film depicts the story of English orphan Lydia Wilton (Whitney), and her husband Bernard Chetwin (Holmes). Although Wilton's marriage is legitimate, it was conducted in secret, and she is accused of having a child out of wedlock. Forced to leave England, she reunites with her husband in Arizona. There, she is tempted by infidelity with an old acquaintance, Eustace Pelham, before seeing the error of her ways and returning to her family.
St. Elmo is a 1910 American silent short drama produced by the Thanhouser Company. The scenario was adapted by Lloyd Lonergan from Augusta Jane Evans's 1866 novel of the same name. Frank H. Crane and Anna Rosemond play the leading roles in the simplified plot that was reliant on inter-titles to tell the story. The film follows St. Elmo who is engaged to his cousin Agnes, being betrayed by his friend Dick Hammond who has an affair with Agnes. St. Elmo challenges and kills Hammond in a duel. A young girl, Edna witnesses the duel and leads Agnes and the sheriff off the trail. St. Elmo disappears and returns five years later to woo Edna. She rejects then accepts his affections only to stop him from committing suicide. The production was met with mixed reviews by critics, but was successful. The film is presumed lost.
St. Elmo is a 1910 American silent short drama produced by the Vitagraph.