Negotiating Motherhood in Nineteenth-Century American Literature

By examining maternal figures in the works of diverse authors such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Sarah Piatt, this book exposes the contentious but negotiations that took place in the American sentimental era - negotiations about the cultural meanings of family, womanhood, and motherhood.