Rowe, Elizabeth - Marlene R. Hansen (essay date 1995)
Marlene R. Hansen (essay date 1995)
SOURCE: "The Pious Mrs. Rowe," in English Studies, Netherlands, Vol. 76, No.1, January, 1995, pp. 34–51.
[In the following essay, Hansen examines the publication history of Rowe's works and suggests that male associates and editors emphasized her feminine piety and virtue as part of a larger cultural conflict.]
Although her works were in constant demand until the mid-nineteenth century, both in England and on the continent,1 Mrs. Rowe is a writer from whom the modern sensibility has turned firmly away. Her writings are mainly devotional and moralistic, although sometimes her religious yearnings are expressed with a sensuality which though interesting and attractive to the twentieth-century reader was worrying to Isaac Watts, her literary executor. The short epistolary pieces which are her contribution to the development of prose fiction, showing as they do a contempt for worldly values,...
[The entire page is 10162 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
