SOURCE: Argersinger, Jan L. “Family Embraces: The Unholy Kiss and Authorial Relations in The Wide, Wide World.” American Literature 74, no. 2 (June 2002): 251-85.
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 novel so as to draw in readers.
