My study explores the gender-based conflict exploited in three of Ellen Glasgow's novels, Phases of an Inferior Planet (1898), The Miller of Old Church (1911), and Vein of Iron (1935), each of which may be termed a "homiletic" work of prose fiction. A literary genre developed exclusively by women writers such as Glasgow in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the homiletic novel serves as a protest against the limitations of an androcentric Christian world view. / Understanding that there is a relationship between religious precepts and the construction of gender, Glasgow, in her homiletic fiction, rejects patriarchal guidelines that place women in the subordinate role of other. All three of Glasgow's homiletic novels focus on one other major, recurrent theme in homiletic fiction; that is, the polarity between the male ministers with their overly rational mind set and the women in their lives who rely on the authority of their own hearts and refuse to spiritually capitulate to a male-centered theology. All of Glasgow's ministers are intellectual rationalists who are philosophically disconnected from the women in their lives, often wives or daughters who spurn traditional Christian thinking. Thus, the authority of Glasgow's ministers in all three of her homiletic novels is undercut by the more autonomous women in their lives, women who mistrust or question androcentric authority. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-10, Section: A, page: 3959. / Major Professor: Joseph R. McElrath, Jr. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77570 |
| Contributors | Jones, Gwendolyn., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 145 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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