SOURCE: “Ellen Gilchrist's Rhoda: Managing the Fiction,” in Southern Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 4, Summer, 1997, pp. 87-96.

In the following essay, Johnson studies Gilchrist's character Rhoda and her desire to seek acceptance from society while at the same time attempting to free herself from its constraints.

Ellen Gilchrist has said that in writing she has “finally found a socially desirable use for the fact that I talk too much” (Lyons 83). This statement is not only revealing of Gilchrist but also of her white female characters, who want to establish their independence from the social norm while also being accepted within that same society. The image for such characters to maintain is that of “the belle … a beautiful, intelligent, yet modest woman with impeccable morality” (Seidel 13). One of these, Rhoda Manning, the central character in both Gilchrist’s novel Net of Jewels and many of her short stories, likes to see...