SOURCE: O'Connell, Catherine. “‘We Must Sorrow’: Silence, Suffering, and Sentimentality in Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World.” Studies in American Fiction 25, no. 1 (spring 1997): 21-39.

In the following essay, O'Connell illuminates narrative tensions between Ellen's feminine subjectivity and the directives of male-gendered authority figures—a conflict that precipitates the protagonist's suffering in The Wide, Wide World.

Since its “rediscovery,”¹ Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World has posed a challenge to critical readers: what is the meaning of the relentless, excruciating focus on the suffering of the young female protagonist in this record-setting bestseller?² The novel is structured around the trials of Ellen Montgomery and her subjective experience of pain. Suffering is a crucial narrative element of The Wide, Wide World and must be accounted for in any interpretation of the novel.

All recent critical considerations of The Wide, Wide World suggest theories about its depiction of suffering, and arguments...