ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the specific efforts by three members of the league—Margret Howth: A Story of To-day (1862), by Rebecca Harding Davis; Work: A Story of Experience (1873), by Louisa May Alcott; and The Silent Partner (1871), by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps—and show that, in developing their imagined loving leagues of sisters, these writers were attempting to save the world by reclaiming the theological virtue of caritas. As reform works, Margret Howth, Work, and The Silent Partner engage the issue of the poor and downtrodden in similar ways. All three stories, for example, explore the meaning of poverty in nineteenth-century social terms and emphasize need as more than a dearth of material goods or financial resources. Exploring the complexity of need through the diversity of her characters, Davis demonstrates charity in Lois's love for others and her community's love for her.
