The Matrilineal Heritage of Louisa May Alcott and Christina Rossetti

Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
	Devotion and Mysticism: Subject and Method
	Preparing the Wood: Matrilineal Theologies of Renunciation and Women's Mysticism
	Preparing the Gesso: Archival Relics, Negotiation with the Dead, and the Methodology of Pilgrimage
	Painting the Matrilineal Image of God: The Theological Statements of the Alcott and Rossetti Women
	Gilding the "Doors of Perception": Mystical Communion across Time and Space
	Notes
1. "I am Even I": Rossetti and Alcott Resisting Male Authority
	"I am Even I": Christina Rossetti's Assertion of the Female Poet's Independence in Her Correspondence with Dante Gabriel Rossetti
	"The Death of a Beautiful Woman Is Unquestionably the Most Poetical Topic in the World"? Christina Rossetti's Portrayal of the Pre-Raphaelite Corpse in Her Contributions to The Germ
	"Cannot You Fancy She May Be Leaning Down to Me from Her Rest"? Christina Rossetti's Subversion of the Female Intercessor in Her Prophetic Poem, "A Year Afterwards"
	"Leave All to God—and Me": Louisa May Alcott's Rejection of Bronson Alcott's Ideology of Individualism
	"Love and Duty Go Hand in Hand": Louisa May Alcott's Reformation of Her Transcendentalist Heroes
	Notes
Part I: "Left-Handed Societies": Women's Life-Writing
2. "Renunciation Is the Law, Devotion to God's Will the Gospel": The Empowerment of Others in the Alcott Women's Life-Writing
	"Let Us Perpetuate in the Remembrances of Our Children [...] What of Love and Good-Will We Have Lived for Them": Abigail Alcott's Model of Relational Sympathy
	"Piety of the Right Kind": Abigail Alcott's Lived Religion in Anna Alcott's Literary Criticism and Louisa May Alcott's Little Women
	"We Enjoyed Our Little Pleasures with Gratitude When We Had Care and Sorrow": Bronson Alcott's Vision of Predestination in Two Early Sketches for Little Women
	"We Must Live for Each Other": The Maternal Bond as Origin and Apotheosis of the Alcott Sisters' Artistry
	"A Little Kingdom I Possess": Abigail Alcott's Theology of Renunciation in the Life-Writing of the Alcott Sisters
	Notes
3. "For Every Human Creature May Lay Claim to Strength": The Rossetti Women's Elevation of the Left Hand
	"Companion, Friend, & Mother mine": Rossetti's Trinitarian Poetics as Accessed through Her Mother
	"Love Is Love": Transforming Conscious Experience through Matrilineal Religious Faith
	"A World of Change & Loss, a World of Death": Rossetti's Theology of Renunciation and the Deferral of Redemption
	"Transfigured by Love's Flame": The Redemptive Power of Frances's Spiritual Authority
	"In Harmony with Her Holy Hope and Joy": Maria's Influence on Christina's Discourse of Lived Religion
	"Her Sister Stood in Deadly Peril to Do Her Good": The Priestly Role of the Sister in "Goblin Market"
	Notes
Part II: "A Loving League of Sisters": Alcott and Rossetti's Promotion of Christian Values through the Ties of Sisterhood
4. We Are All Relative Creatures: The Transformative Power of Sisterhood in Rossetti's Maude
	"I am Sick of Display and Poetry and Acting": The Temptation of Originality
	"Let Us Wait the End in Peace": The Spiritual Transformation of Maude's Poetry
	"She Had Been Overturned": Maude's Experience of the imitatio Christi and Its Impact on Her Verse
	"Amen for Us All": The Trinitarian Relationships of Sisters
	Notes
5. "Happy Women": Alcott's Sisterly Utopia
	"The Doctrine of Hatred Must Be Preached as the Counteraction of the Doctrine of Love": The Destructive Ramifications of Transcendentalist Self-Culture
	"You Will Do My Part Better Than I Could": Christie's Rehabilitation and the Emergence of her Sisterhood
	A "Sympathetic Undertone ... So Magical in Its Effect": Christie's Transcendent Sympathy and the Extension of her Sisterhood
	"A Loving League of Sisters": Christie's Intersectional Sisterhood
	"Bigger, Lovelier and More Imposing Than Any Woman I Ever Saw": Female Creativity and Sisterly Ministry
	Notes
Conclusion
	Notes
CODA. Nineteenth-Century Women's Matrilineal Theologies of Renunciation
	"Letting Go a Presence for an Expectation": Emily Dickinson's Doubting Theology of Renunciation
	"Where Did Your Christ Come from? From God and a Woman": Sojourner Truth's Spiritual Motherhood
	"O God, No Blasphemy It Is to Feel We Loved in Trinity": Mystical Communion in the Matrilineal Community of "Michael Field"
	"But You Have Come!": Transatlantic Spiritual Sisterhood and Mystical Communion in Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Shuttle
	Notes
Works Cited
	Archival Sources
	Illustrations Cited
	Secondary Sources
	Works of Reference
Appendices
	Appendix 1 "Rolf Walden Emmerboy" Transcription
	Appendix 2 "Two Scenes in a Family" Transcription
	Appendix 3 "Wealth" Transcription
	Appendix 4 "Our Madonna" Transcription
	Appendix 5 "Story of an Apple" Transcription
	Appendix 6 "Extracts from Bradley's Sermons" Transcription
	Appendix 7 "The Maid of Sorrow" Transcription
Index