SOURCE: "Homeward Bound: The Novels of Constance Fenimore Woolson," Legacy: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers, Vol. 6, No. 2, Fall 1989, pp. 17-28.

In the following essay, Dean explores the idea of independence which is developed in Woolson's later novels.

When Henry James wrote his generally favorable review of Constance Woolson in the February 12, 1887, edition of Harper's Weekly, he criticized her for limiting women's choices by too often having them choose marriage: Miss Woolson, he says, "likes the unmarried … but she likes marriages even better" (182). For him, Woolson was not revolutionary in her portraits of women: rather than adding further complications to women's lives, she was content to explore the complications that already existed for women "fenced in by the old disabilities and prejudices" (179). Critics like Mary Kelley and Nina Baym who have studied a broad range of nineteenth-century works have helped us define these "disabilities and prejudices" which...