ABSTRACT
This chapter contextualizes the novels of Warner and Montgomery within this evolving American narrative paradigm for women. It relies upon the context that Gammel and Epperly provide to analyze the broader cultural impact of Montgomery's novel and its American Cinderella paradigm. Moreover, the American Cinderella is a narrative paradigm that rejects the heroic female modeled in Jane Eyre. It may be argued that the American Cinderella in Jane Eyre's American progeny is nothing more than the typical domestic narrative of sentimental American literature, which focuses on the domestication of the heroine. Although the American Cinderella is undoubtedly linked with the sentimental narrative, it is also a distinctive American literary phenomenon that evolved in nineteenth-century women's literature. However, the fairytale and fantastic tropes in these American novels function to domesticate the heroine and transform her into the ideal inhabitant of the domestic sphere. Thus, the American Cinderella transmutes the heroic female back into a celebrated but thoroughly domestic heroine.
