SOURCE: “Image of Womanhood in the Spoon River Portraits,” in Midamerica, Vol. 6, 1979, pp. 62-71.

In the following essay, Schroth examines Masters's interpretation of nineteenth-century womanhood in Spoon River, finding that the female characters fall into three distinct categories.

Following the Civil War, our nation turned to the gospel of practicality. Machinery, economic competition, and the capitalistic system—all did their part to create a new God—success. The ideal man of this day was the practical man who devoted his energies not to the life of personal realization but to the goal of material or social advancement. Hostile to experience, he made the pursuit of success his central goal, and life was reft of human values.

It is this stifling of the world of realization, this adhering to narrow morality and practical prudence at the expense of the full life that Edgar Lee Masters is decrying in his...