The Minister's Wooing is a historical novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, first published in 1859. Set in 18th-century Newport, Rhode Island, the novel explores New England history, highlights the issue of slavery, and critiques the Calvinist theology in which Stowe was raised.[1] Due to similarities in setting, comparisons are often drawn between this work and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850). However, in contrast to Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter, The Minister's Wooing is a "sentimentalromance";[2] its central plot revolves around courtship and marriage. Moreover, Stowe's exploration of the regional history of New England deals primarily with the domestic sphere, the New England response to slavery, and the psychological impact of the Calvinist doctrines of predestination and disinterested benevolence.[3]
With its intense focus upon the history, customs, and mannerisms of New England, The Minister's Wooing is one sense an example of the local color writing that proliferated in late 19th century. However, because Stowe also highlighted the issue of slavery, this time in the North, this novel is related to her earlier anti-slavery novels.[4] Finally, the work serves as a critique of Calvinism, written from the perspective of an individual deeply familiar with the theological system.
Stowe's father was well-known Calvinist minister Lyman Beecher. Stowe drew elements of the novel from events in both her and her older sister Catharine Beecher's lives.[5] Throughout the novel, Stowe portrays the reaction of different personality types to the pressures of Calvinist principles, illustrating in this manner what she perceives as Calvinism's strengths and weaknesses.[6] In particular, responding to the untimely death of her sister's fiancé and the deaths of two of her own children, Stowe addresses the issue of predestination.[7] This suggested that individuals were either saved or damned at birth, and only the elect would go to heaven.
Publication history
The Minister's Wooing was first serialized in the Atlantic Monthly, from December 1858 to December 1859. It was published in book form first in England by Sampson Low, Son & Co., in order to guarantee British royalties, and then in the US by Derby and Jackson.[8]
In 1857, Harriet Stowe's son Henry drowned in the Connecticut River. Like the sailor James in the novel, he was unregenerate at the time of his death. Stowe had first begun to reassess the Calvinist view of salvation after watching her sister Catherine wrestle in 1822 with the similar loss of an unregenerate fiancé. Henry's death spurred further reflection. The grief and doubt which both Harriet and her sister had dealt with inspired the novel. Their experiences are expressed in the character of Mrs. Marvyn.[10]
Some readers, including Stowe's grandson Lyman Beecher Stowe, proclaimed the book to be an assault on Calvinism. Stowe questioned the establishment in which she had been raised, but her journals do not suggest that she intended an attack against this system. She expressed a profound respect and admiration for both Calvinist theology and the individuals who grappled with its doctrines.[11] Her stated intent instead was to point out certain flaws and to spread tolerance.[12]
Synopsis
The story is set in Newport, Rhode Island, when it was still a prosperous fishing and shipping town and not a fashionable retreat for the rich. Dr. Hopkins is a 40-year-old minister. Mary is the daughter of his hostess in town, and Hopkins soon falls in love with Mary. She, however, is still in love with James Marvyn, a sailor presumed lost at sea.
Mary is very religious and, after a period of mourning, she decides to marry Dr. Hopkins. Mary has other suitors, including Aaron Burr, but she sees that even though he is the grandson of Jonathan Edwards and has been raised in Calvinism, he is mired in evil. James returns from the sea before the marriage and Dr. Hopkins knows that he cannot compete with Mary's love for the sailor. Hopkins calls off the marriage. Mary and James are free to marry and live happily.[13]
Major characters
Minister Samuel Hopkins
He is an apostle of Jonathan Edwards's "New Divinity." He struggles to maintain his spiritual independence and assert his spiritual authority against the wealthy members of his congregation, who observe church rules rather than living truly Christian lives. He is named for and based on the historical Samuel Hopkins, minister at the First Congregational Church of Newport in the late 18th century. But events of the story are fictional.[14]
Mary Scudder
This fictional character is partly based on the author's older sister, Catharine Beecher. Mary loved a sailor who has been lost in a shipwreck and is presumed dead. She is a typical Stowe heroine, resigned to her sorrow and bearing her grief as atonement for her sins and those of her lost seaman.
James Marvyn
Mary's lost sailor. Both Mary and his mother agonize over his fate and his salvation. He was not a Christian and therefore, according to traditional Calvinist theology, irrevocably damned. He eventually returns to Mary. Having survived the shipwreck, his virtue is shown by his having become a Christian and achieved wealth.
Mrs. Marvyn
James's mother. She is angry with a God who seemed to have destined the death of her unsaved son. Her despair is lifted with the help of Mary and Candace, a free black woman who works as her servant. They convince her that God is love.
Minor characters
Candace
Mary Scudder's free black servant. Candace's displays of integrity and love toward Mrs. Marvyn speak very highly of her character. Mary treats Candace more as a friend and confidant than a servant.
Virginie de Frontenac
She is the wife of a French diplomat and she falls in love with Aaron Burr. Mary helps Virginie save her marriage. In return, Virginie helps bring Mary and James together. Virginie is a Roman Catholic and serves as a figure of the religious tolerance that Stowe had begun to embrace by this time in her life.[15]
Aaron Burr
Based on the real-life Vice President of the United States, Burr is a grandson of Jonathan Edwards. Stowe uses him as an example of some of the ill effects of being raised in Calvinistic fanaticism. Burr attempts to woo Mary as well as Virginie. Mary confronts him with his attempted adultery (pp.362–63), and he withdraws. But this does not stop him from his "brilliant and unscrupulous political intrigues" and ultimate, total disgrace (p.428). "Chased from society, pointed at everywhere by the finger of hatred, so accursed in common esteem… one seems to see in a doom so much above that of other men the power of an avenging Nemesis for sins beyond those of ordinary humanity." (p.428, Hurst & Co. ed.)
Miss Prissy Diamond
The town dressmaker and busy body. Although James returns to town, Mary believes she has an obligation to marry Minister Hopkins. Miss Prissy tells the minister about Mary's true love. Hopkins calls off the wedding, so that Mary and James are free to marry.
Adams, John R (1963), Harriet Beecher Stowe, New York: Twayne.
Bell, Michael Davitt (1995), "Women's Fiction and the Literary Marketplace in the 1850s", in Bercovitch, Sacvan; Patell, Cyrus RK (eds.), The Cambridge History of American Literature, vol.2, Cambridge, England; New York: Cambridge University Press, pp.74–123, ISBN0-521-30106-8 .
Harris, Susan K (1993), "The Female Imaginary in Harriet Beecher Stowe's the Minister's Wooing", New England Quarterly, 66 (2): 179–98, doi:10.2307/365843, JSTOR365843 .
——— (1999b), "Introduction", in Stowe, Harriet Beecher (ed.), The Minister's Wooing, New York: Penguin, pp.vii–xxiii, ISBN0-14-043702-9 .
Jackson, Phyllis Wynn (1947), Victorian Cinderella: The Story of Harriet Beecher Stowe, New York: H. Wolff.
Ramirez, Anne West (Spring 2002), "Harriet Beecher Stowe's Christian Feminism in the Minister's Wooing: A Precedent for Emily Dickinson", Christianity and Literature, 51 (3): 407–24, doi:10.1177/014833310205100305 .
Stowe, Harriet (1896), The Minister's Wooing, Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S., and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the [American] Civil War".
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe was an American author and abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), which depicts the harsh conditions experienced by enslaved African Americans. The book reached an audience of millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and in Great Britain, energizing anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. Stowe wrote 30 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential both for her writings as well as for her public stances and debates on social issues of the day.
Lyman Beecher was a Presbyterian minister, and the father of 13 children, many of whom became writers or ministers, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Beecher, Edward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Catharine Beecher, and Thomas K. Beecher.
Harriet Jacobs was an African-American abolitionist and writer whose autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, is now considered an "American classic".
Samuel Hopkins was an American Congregationalist theologian of the late colonial era of the United States. Hopkinsian theology was named for him. Hopkins was an early abolitionist, saying that it was in the interest and duty of the U.S. to set free all of their slaves.
A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin is a book by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. It was published to document the veracity of the depiction of slavery in Stowe's anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). First published in 1853 by Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, the book also provides insights into Stowe's own views on slavery.
Anti-Tom literature consists of the 19th century pro-slavery novels and other literary works written in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Also called plantation literature, these writings were generally written by authors from the Southern United States. Books in the genre attempted to show that slavery was beneficial to African Americans and that the evils of slavery, as depicted in Stowe's book, were overblown and incorrect.
Oldtown Folks is an 1869 novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It is written from the first-person perspective of a young man named Horace Holyoke, who describes his youth in fictional Oldtown, Massachusetts - including humorous depictions of daily life, behavior of local towns folk, and the adoption of Harry and Eglantine Percival.
The Harriet Beecher Stowe House is a historic home in Cincinnati, Ohio which was once the residence of influential antislavery author Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.
James Sherman, was an English Congregationalist minister. He was an abolitionist, and a popular preacher at The Castle Street Chapel in Reading from 1821 to 1836. He and his second wife Martha Sherman made a success of Surrey Chapel, Blackfriars, London from 1836−54. Martha died in 1848.
The Harriet Beecher Stowe House is a historic house museum and National Historic Landmark at 73 Forest Street in Hartford, Connecticut that was once the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Stowe lived in this house for the last 23 years of her life. It was her family's second home in Hartford. The 5,000 sq ft cottage-style house is located adjacent to the Mark Twain House and is open to the public. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, and declared a National Historic Landmark in 2013.
Originating in New England, one particular Beecher family in the 19th century was a political family notable for issues of religion, civil rights, and social reform. Notable members of the family include clergy, educators, authors and artists. Many of the family were Yale-educated and advocated for abolitionism, temperance, and women's rights. Some of the family provided material or ideological support to the Union in the American Civil War. The family is of English descent.
The Old School–New School controversy was a schism of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America that took place in 1837 and lasted for over 20 years. The Old School, led by Charles Hodge of Princeton Theological Seminary, was more conservative theologically and did not support the revival movement. It called for traditional Calvinist orthodoxy as outlined in the Westminster standards.
The Harriet Beecher Stowe House is a historic home and National Historic Landmark at 63 Federal Street in Brunswick, Maine, notable as a short-term home of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Calvin Ellis Stowe and where Harriet wrote her 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Earlier, it had been the home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as a student. It is today owned by Bowdoin College. A space within the house, called Harriet's Writing Room, is open to the public.
Palmetto Leaves is a memoir and travel guide written by Harriet Beecher Stowe about her winters in the town of Mandarin, Florida, published in 1873. Already famous for having written Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Stowe came to Florida after the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865). She purchased a plantation near Jacksonville as a place for her son to recover from the injuries he had received as a Union soldier and to make a new start in life. After visiting him, she became so enamored with the region she purchased a cottage and orange grove for herself and wintered there until 1884, even though the plantation failed within its first year. Parts of Palmetto Leaves appeared in a newspaper published by Stowe's brother, as a series of letters and essays about life in northeast Florida.
William Henry Beecher was a dyspeptic minister who was called "The Unlucky" because misfortune attended all his ventures.
Francis Johnson Webb was an American novelist, poet, and essayist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His novel, The Garies and Their Friends (1857), was the second novel by an African American to be published, and the first to portray the daily lives of free blacks in the North.
Mary Espartero Webb was an American actress and orator known for her dramatic readings of poetry and literature. She toured the northern United States and performed in Europe as a protégée of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Mifflin v. Dutton, 190 U.S. 265 (1903), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the authorized appearance of a work in a magazine without a copyright notice specifically dedicated to that work transfers that work into the public domain.
Mary Henderson Eastman was an American historian and novelist who is noted for her works about Native American life. She was also an advocate of slavery in the United States. In response to Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery Uncle Tom's Cabin, Eastman defended Southern slaveholding society by writing Aunt Phillis's Cabin: or, Southern Life As It Is (1852), which earned her considerable fame. She was the wife of the American illustrator and army officer Seth Eastman.
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