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Elizabeth Stoddard's revolutionary novel explores the conflict between a woman's instinct, passion, and will, and the social taboos, family allegiances, and traditional New England restraint that inhibit her. Set in a small seaport town, The Morgesons (1862) is the dramatic story of Cassandra Morgeson's fight against social and religious norms in a quest for sexual, spiritual, and economic autonomy. A female bildungsroman that embodies the convergence of the melodrama and sexual undercurrents of gothic romance and Victorian social realism, The Morgesons marks an important transition in the development of the novel and evoked comparisons during Stoddard's lifetime with such masters as Balzac, Tolstoy, Eliot, the Brontes, and Hawthorne.
