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The Wide, Wide World Summary
Susan Warner

Everything you need to understand or teach The Wide, Wide World by Susan Warner. Products may contain comprehensive summaries, analysis, notes, articles, essays, lesson plans and more. See below for details on what is included.

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The The Wide, Wide World Study Pack contains about 384 pages of study material in 15 products, including:

Essays & Analysis (15)

Critical Review by Prospective Review

8,710 words, approx. 30 pages

In the following excerpt, the reviewer describes The Wide, Wide World as an excellent example of morally didactic literature for children but critiques some of its stylistic qualities. Except Amy Herb... Read more

Critical Review by Southern Literary Messenger

453 words, approx. 2 pages

In the following excerpted review, the critic calls The Wide, Wide World “the most delightful tale that has probably ever been written.” We have no intention of criticising any productio... Read more

Critical Essay by Edward Halsey Foster

8,584 words, approx. 29 pages

In the following excerpt, Foster surveys the content and reception of The Wide, Wide World, considering the book “one of the first, and certainly the most famous domestic novel” in Ameri... Read more

Critical Essay by Richard H. Brodhead

2,252 words, approx. 8 pages

In the following excerpt, Brodhead explores the acculturated psychodynamics of Ellen's reliance on her mother, and the effects of the latter's death. Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide... Read more

Critical Essay by Nancy Schnog

7,849 words, approx. 27 pages

In the following essay, Schnog declares that The Wide, Wide World is a complex, psychological portrait of feminine sentiment. In the past few years Susan Warner's sentimental novel The Wide Wid... Read more

Critical Essay by Isabelle White

5,533 words, approx. 19 pages

In the following essay, White places The Wide, Wide World in the ideological context of nineteenth-century America and states that the work represents the conflict between the individual and authority... Read more

Critical Essay by Susan S. Williams

8,902 words, approx. 30 pages

In the following essay, Williams remarks on Warner's initial resistance to being labeled a sentimental novelist. I “Sue, I believe if you would try, you could write a story.” Thus... Read more

Critical Essay by Grace Ann Hovet and Theodore R. Hovet

8,600 words, approx. 29 pages

In the following essay, the critics read The Wide, Wide World as a sophisticated rendering of feminine identity construction that has been falsely dismissed by many as mere sentimental fiction. I. Rea... Read more

Critical Essay by Veronica Stewart

7,955 words, approx. 27 pages

In the following essay, Stewart characterizes Nancy Vawse as a subversive trickster figure in The Wide, Wide World who provides a vital commentary on the use of power as represented in the novel. In S... Read more

Critical Essay by Veronica Stewart

8,304 words, approx. 28 pages

In the following essay, Stewart compares The Wide, Wide World with John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and asserts that Warner's novel is an allegorical, proto-feminist spiritual jo... Read more

Critical Essay by Catherine O'Connell

7,889 words, approx. 27 pages

In the following essay, O'Connell illuminates narrative tensions between Ellen's feminine subjectivity and the directives of male-gendered authority figures—a conflict that precip... Read more

Critical Essay by Sara E. Quay

9,868 words, approx. 33 pages

In the following essay, Quay relates Warner's use of nostalgia and loss in The Wide, Wide World to emerging nineteenth-century middle-class consumerism. Taken as a whole, Susan Warner's ... Read more

Critical Essay by Suzanne M. Ashworth

9,471 words, approx. 32 pages

In the following excerpt, Ashworth explains the thematic significance of Ellen's voracious reading and finds that this characteristic is an important mechanism of identity construction in The W... Read more

Critical Essay by Elizabeth Fekete Trubey

8,641 words, approx. 29 pages

In the following essay, Trubey evaluates the portrayal of women's reading in The Wide, Wide World as an instructional but potentially subversive activity. The act of reading plays an important ... Read more

Critical Essay by Jan L. Argersinger

12,162 words, approx. 41 pages

In the following excerpt, Argersinger probes Warner's use of “authorial seduction” in The Wide, Wide World, a process of subtly eroticizing familial and power relations in the nov... Read more

The Wide, Wide World SummarySusan Warner

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Essays & Analysis (15)

The Wide, Wide World Summary
Susan Warner