SOURCE: Ashworth, Suzanne M. “Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World, Conduct Literature, and Protocols of Female Reading in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America.” Legacy 17, no. 2 (2000): 141-64.
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 Wide, Wide World.
