The feminization of American culture

Introduction : The legacy of American Victorianism : the meaning of Little Eva

pt. 1. The sentimentalization of status. Clerical disestablishment

Feminine disestablishment

Ministers and mothers : changing and exchanging roles

pt. 2. The sentimentalization of creed and culture. The loss of theology : from dogma to fiction

The escape from history : the static imagination

The domestication of death : the posthumous congregation

The periodical press : arena for hostility

pt. 3. Protest : case studies in American romanticism : Margaret Fuller and the disavowal of fiction

Herman Melville and the revolt against the reader

Epilogue.