num_pages: 404
description: Rose of Dutcher's Coolly tells the story of a country girl of precocious ability who is raised by her widower father on a small Wisconsin farm. She wants to be a poet and eventually attends the university, where her talent is encouraged. A carefully crafted defense of the New Woman, the first generation of women to achieve economic and social indepence, Rose of Dutcher's Coolly deals with issues that are still with us - the nature of femininity, the problem of reconciling career and family, the meaning of "love," and the need for equal opportunity. Above all, it records a nineteenth-century man's vision of a world that still eludes us, one in which men and women are equal partners.Excerpt:Rose was an unaccountable child from the start. She learned to speak early, and while she did not use "baby-talk" she had strange words of her own. She called hard money "tow" and a picture "tac," names which had nothing to do with onomatop ia, though it seemed so in some cases. Bread and milk she called "plop." She began to read of her own accord when four years old, picking out the letters from the advertisements of the newspapers, and running to her mother at the sink or bread-board to learn what each word meant. Her demand for stories grew to be a burden. She was in satiate, nothing but sleep subdued her eager brain. As she grew older she read and re-read her picture-books when alone, but when older people were talking she listened as attentively as if she understood every word. She had the power of amusing herself and visited very little with other children.
language: English
title: Rose of Dutcher's Coolly
titlecomplete: Rose of Dutcher's Coolly
genres: Fiction
ratings_count: 40
publisher: Bison Books