In Memory of Cassie

Child Death and Religious Vision in American Women's Novels

Bibliographic Data

ID4517396
AuthorsAnn-Janine Morey, Ann‐Janine Morey (corresponding author)
Year1996
Volume6
Issue1
Pages87-104
Publication date1996-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligion and American Culture A Journal of Interpretation (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1052-1151 • E-ISSN: 1533-8568
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1525/rac.1996.6.1.03a00050
OpenAlexW4253916584
LanguageEN
References cited16

This article investigates the contribution of several twentieth-century women writers to the legacy of women's writing about child death and scriptural consolation. The suffering and death of children constitutes the most intractable of religious problems, and recent studies of parental grieving support women's literary treatment of child death. Thus, just as child death creates a unique religious space, it may also demand its own literary category and aesthetic. By considering the unique dimensions of parental grieving, and by looking at how Perri Klass, Toni Morrison, and Harriette Arnow handle this subject, it is possible to gain fresh literary perspective on the fiction of nineteenth-century American women, many of whom also addressed the problem of child death and scriptural consolation. Women writers create children who are more than literary or symbolic commodities, and, in so doing, these writers challenge us to reevaluate scriptural and social perspectives on child death

Aesthetics · Art · Consolation · Literature · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Visual arts · Computer Science · Gender Studies · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · History · Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse · Psychology · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology

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