Title: The wilderness within
First published: 1999
Description: America's literature is notably marked by a preoccupation with the spiritual quest. Questing heroes from Huck Finn to Nick Adams have undertaken solitary journeys that pull them away from family and society and into a transformative wilderness that brings them to a new understanding of the spiritual world. Women, however, have not often been portrayed as questing heroes.

Bound to home and community, they have been more frequently cast as representatives of that stifling world from which the hero is compelled to flee. Are women in American literary texts thus excluded from spiritual experience?

Kristina K. Groover, in examining this question, finds that books by American women writers offer alternative patterns for seeking revelation - patterns which emphasize not solitary journeys into the wilderness, but the sacredness of everyday life.

Drawing on the work of feminist theorists and theologians, including Carol Gilligan, Naomi Goldenberg, and Rosemary Ruether, Groover explores the spiritual nature and force of domesticity, community, storytelling, and the garden in the works of such writers as Toni Morrison, Katherine Anne Porter, Kaye Gibbons, and Alice Walker. Ordinary personal experience in these works becomes a source for spiritual revelation.

Wisdom is gained, lessons are learned, and lives are healed not in spite of home and communal ties, but because of them.
Subjects: American Domestic fiction, American Psychological fiction, American fiction, Domestic fiction, American, History, History and criticism, Psychological fiction, American, Quests (Expeditions) in literature, Spiritual life in literature, Wilderness areas in literature, Women and literature, Women authors, Histoire, Femmes et litterature, Roman familial americain, Roman americain, Frauenliteratur, Vie spirituelle dans la litterature, Ecrits de femmes americains, Histoire et critique, Reserves de la vie sauvage dans la litterature, Roman psychologique americain, Familie, Psychologie, Quete (Litterature), American literature, women authors, American literature, history and criticism, Spiritual biography, American fiction, women authors
Places: United States
LC classification: PS374.W6 G76 1999