SOURCE: Long, Lisa A. “Imprisoned in/at Home: Criminal Culture in Rebecca Harding Davis' Margret Howth: A Story of Today.” Arizona Quarterly 54, no. 2 (1998): 65-98.

In the following essay, Long compares the discourse of American prison reform and the discourse of domestic culture in the 1860s, focusing on the work of progressive social critic Rebecca Harding Davis, whose novel Margret Howth connects the struggles of middle-class white women to those of marginalized groups in American culture, especially African Americans and supposed criminals.

Midway through Rebecca Harding Davis' first novel, Margret Howth: A Story of To-day (1862), her social reformer, Dr. Knowles, exposes the seemingly uninhabitable dens of the homeless to the title character, demanding of her, “Home! … oh, Margret, what is home?”¹ Knowles' deceptively simple question conjures up issues central to the text: the ravages of industrial capitalism, the dictates of domestic ideology, and the vulnerability and marginal status assigned...