SOURCE: Bakker, Jan. “Twists of Sentiment in Antebellum Southern Romance.” The Southern Literary Journal 26, no. 1 (fall 1993): 3-13.

In the following essay, Bakker emphasizes Caroline Lee Hentz's and E. D. E. N. Southworth's manipulation of conventional sentimental devices in their early romances for the purpose of disclosing “unpleasant truths” about life in the South.

This discussion of some twists of sentiment in antebellum Southern romance is limited to two first works by female writers of the time and place: Lovell's Folly (1833), by Caroline Lee Hentz (1800-1856); and Retribution; or, The Vale of Shadows. A Tale of Passion (1849), by Emma Dorothy Eliza Navitte Southworth (1819-1899)—or Eden, as she preferred.¹ Hentz and Southworth are two of the women authors of the Old South who, Jay B. Hubbell writes in The South in American Literature, 1607-1900, outnumbered contemporary men of the region who can be considered professional writers (603). In Pastoral in...