ABSTRACT
Although their names are rarely spoken of together in literary circles, Martha Finley and Harriet Beecher Stowe have strikingly similar backgrounds. Both wrote immensely popular sentimental Christian fiction in the nineteenth century, both lived and spent time in the same areas of the country, and both were members of famous Evangelical Presbyterian families. It would seem impossible for the two women authors not to have heard of each other, especially because their writings center on what, to them, was the highest possible calling in life—evangelizing, converting, and saving the American public.
Indeed, they even both use a young, white, female child (Evangeline St. Clair and Elsie Dinsmore respectively) to inspire their readers to convert to or reaffirm their faith. While Harriet Beecher Stowe is considered a literary powerhouse, critics often deride Finley. This chapter suggests that it is not merely that Finley is doctrinally conservative that relegates her writing to a secondary status in critical circles. Rather, it is that Eva and Elsie as characters reach different audiences to different ends, and these shifts are what make Stowe’s work feel palatable and Finley’s objectionable. Little Eva is a child character who is to be archetypically read by adult audiences, and her story and its purpose is one that would be explained to young children first prior to them encountering her on their own. The Elsie series, though, requires no mediation: this difference alarms readers because it bespeaks of the series’ sustainable Evangelical power that is atypical of sentimental literature holistically.
