A New England Tale (Annotated)

A New England Tale (1822) is Catharine Maria Sedgwick's incisive first novel, a work that transforms the conventions of the sentimental and domestic novel into a critique of religious severity, social hypocrisy, and patriarchal authority. Centered on Jane Elton, an orphan whose moral intelligence develops amid hardship, the book contrasts Calvinist rigidity with a more humane, ethical Christianity...