The Minister's Wooing

Anne West Ramirez (Essay Date Spring 2002)

SOURCE: Ramirez, Anne West. "Harriet Beecher Stowe's Christian Feminism in The Minister's Wooing: A Precedent for Emily Dickinson." Christianity and Literature 51, no. 3 (spring 2002): 407-24.

In the following essay, Ramirez argues that A Minister's Wooing, with its use of Christian teaching to challenge the dominant patriarchal institutions of its day, illuminates the shared cultural heritage of Stowe and Emily Dickinson.

Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

—Luke 12:32

God will not let us have heaven here below, but only such glimpses and faint showings as parents sometimes give to children, when they show them beforehand the jewelry and pictures and stores of rare and curious treasures which they hold for the possession of their riper years.

—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister's Wooing