SOURCE: "The Legacy of American Victorianism: The Meaning of Little Eva," in The Feminization of American Culture, Alfred A. Knopf, 1977, pp. 3-13.

In the essay that follows, Douglas asserts that the complex politics of sentimental novels emerges from a combination of American capitalism and Calvinism.

Today many Americans, intellectuals as well as less scholarly people, feel a particular fondness for the artifacts, the literature, the mores of our Victorian past.¹ I wrote [The Feminization of American Culture, in which this essay appears] because I am one of these people. As a child I read with formative intensity in a collection of Victorian sentimental fiction, a legacy from my grandmother's girlhood. Reading these stories, I first discovered the meaning of absorption: the pleasure and guilt of possessing a secret supply. I read through the "Elsie Dinsmore" books, the "Patty" books, and countless others; I followed the timid exploits of...