ABSTRACT
William A. Caruthers' first novel, Kentuckian in New-York, reflects a higher level of sectional tension than Kennedy's Swallow Barn —and indeed, than all of the other works in this study except Tucker's The Partisan Leader. The Kentuckian in New-York is the work of William A. Caruthers, a Virginian who was married to a Georgian woman and at the time living in New York City. The contemporary reviewers of Kentuckian did not all recognize this theme in Caruthers' work, perhaps because the intersectional novel was a new type at the time. The story develops as Victor and Augustus travel to New York with Montgomery Damon and Beverley travels to South Carolina. The Kentuckian in New-York also relies on the organic model of society on which the familial paradigm of Yazawa's formulation rests. The middle states' role, however, was not simply to serve as a commercial link, but to aid the spiritual union of the states.
