ABSTRACT
IN THE FALL OF 1862 ELIZABETH STODDARD SENT A COPY OF HER FIRST NOVEL, The Morgesons, to her good friend Bayard Taylor.1 While praising its realistic descriptions and its “well-drawn” minor characters, Taylor was disturbed by Stoddard’s heroine, the irrepressible Cassandra Morgeson. “You feel a strong interest in Cassandra without much liking for, or sympathy with her,” he disclosed to Stoddard. He expressed relief at the conclusion when “the heroine [was] married and out of the way.” Taylor interpreted Cassandra as a woman “tossed to and from by an animal tumult for which marriage is the cure.” He found this independent young heroine who embraces her sexuality and acquires self-awareness amidst repressive nineteenth-century cultural ideals of womanhood troubling. Her transgressions were justified only by the domestic resolution of the novel.2
