Secondary Heroines in Nineteenth-Century British and American Novels

Taking up works by Samuel Richardson, James Fenimore Cooper, Sir Walter Scott, and Catharine Maria Sedgwick, among others, Jennifer B. Camden examines the role of "secondary heroines" in early British and American novels. By showing that they are a site for the displaced anxieties produced by the national ideals proffered in the novel, Camden offers an important intervention into the ways in which early novels use character to further ideologies of race, class, sex, and gender.