page_title: The Gates Ajar
section_title: Composition and publication
hierarchical_section_title: The Gates Ajar / Composition and publication
caption_attribution_description: English: Mary Cabot, Aunt Winifred Forceythe, and Faith Forceythe.
context_page_description: The Gates Ajar is an 1868 religious novel by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps that was immensely popular following its publication. It was the second best-selling religious novel of the 19th century. 80,000 copies were sold in America by 1900; 100,000 were sold in England during the same time period. Sequels Beyond the Gates and The Gates Between were also bestsellers, and the three together are referred to as the author's "Spiritualist novels."
context_section_description: Phelps began writing The Gates Ajar in the final year of the American Civil War, inspired in part by the death of her mother, stepmother, and her fiancé who was killed at the Battle of Antietam. Phelps later claimed the book came from divine inspiration: "The angel said unto me 'Write!' and I wrote." She spent two years revising the book in her father's attic. Frustrated by the insignificant role women played during the War, she wrote the book specifically with a female audience in mind. In an autobiography, she reflected, "Into that great world of woe my little book stole forth, trembling... I do not think I thought so much about the suffering of men... but the women,—the helpless, outnumbering, unconsulted women." Emily Dickinson, according to scholar Barton Levi St. Armand, was among those who believed in a similar vision of the afterlife and found the book helpful in organizing those thoughts.
  The book was published in November 1868 by Fields, Osgood, and Company. Along with an initial royalty check for $600, publisher James Thomas Fields reported to her, "Your book is moving grandly. It has already a sale of four thousand copies."
  The Gates Ajar, according to Helen Sootin Smith, incorporates at least four literary elements: "sermon, diary, sentimental domestic plot, and allegory."  She identified the latter as its "most important literary form."
  The Gates Ajar, as a sacred allegory, relates the steps in Christian redemption.  The rude, willful Mary in the opening chapters represents that of unregenerate man, who has succumbed to the temptations of 'the world, the flesh, and the devil.'. . .
  Royal Cabot, however, did not die in vain.  He is Christ, dying in the Civil War for the sins of mankind. As Christ's death redeemed mankind so that it could be reunited with Him in heaven, so Roy's death saves Mary for everlasting life with him. 
  Phelps published two similar books, Beyond the Gates (1883) and The Gates Between (1887), though they are not traditional sequels as they do not continue with the plot or characters of The Gates Ajar. She later lamented she did not write more, partially because of how much effort she had expended so quickly because of her financial duress. In a letter to George Eliot, she wrote:
   I do not hope much for it now; I am physically too far spent even to do what is a bitter comfort to hope I might have done, if the success of 'The Gates Ajar' had not driven a very young woman who wanted money, into rapid and unstudious work before the evil days came when work must be quietly put out of the imagination like other forms of suicide.
caption: Illustration by Jessie Curtis featuring Mary Cabot, Aunt Winifred Forceythe, and Faith Forceythe
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