In Memory of Cassie: Child Death and Religious Vision in American Women's Novels
This article investigates the contribution of several twentieth-century women writers to the legacy of women's writing about child death and scriptural consolation. The suffering and death of children constitutes the most intractable of religious problems, and recent studies of parental grievin...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge University Press
1996
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| In: |
Religion and American culture
Year: 1996, Volume: 6, Issue: 1, Pages: 87-104 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article investigates the contribution of several twentieth-century women writers to the legacy of women's writing about child death and scriptural consolation. The suffering and death of children constitutes the most intractable of religious problems, and recent studies of parental grieving support women's literary treatment of child death. Thus, just as child death creates a unique religious space, it may also demand its own literary category and aesthetic. By considering the unique dimensions of parental grieving, and by looking at how Perri Klass, Toni Morrison, and Harriette Arnow handle this subject, it is possible to gain fresh literary perspective on the fiction of nineteenth-century American women, many of whom also addressed the problem of child death and scriptural consolation. Women writers create children who are more than literary or symbolic commodities, and, in so doing, these writers challenge us to reevaluate scriptural and social perspectives on child death. |
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| ISSN: | 1533-8568 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religion and American culture
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1525/rac.1996.6.1.03a00050 |