Historical Fiction Sedgwick, Catharine Maria: Married or Single?. v1. 8 Jan 2017

[AlexBell]

Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789-1867) was an American novelist and short story writer who wrote mainly "Domestic Fiction." Her work was popular from the 1820s to the 1850s, but by the end of the 19th century her work was hardly read. In the 1960s feminist scholars led renewed interest in her work.

She was born into a rich upper class Puritan family, and later joined the Unitarian Church. Her religious beliefs are often mentioned in her writings, including her acceptance of the beliefs of others, and acceptance of people of other races.

Married or Single? was Miss Sedgwick's last novel, published ten years before her death. It is set in a New York in which Harlem was a country suburb, there were obvious social classes, and there had been many Irish immigrants. The plot is complex, and she writes 'we raise our voice ... against the miserable cant that matrimony is essential to the feebler sex ... that a woman's single life must be useless or undignified, ... that she is but an adjunct of man.'

The source text was taken from the University of Virginia Library via the On Line Books page, and checked against other versions. I have silently corrected typos, curled quotes, replaced italics, used American English, and made changes to spelling and hyphenation using the Cambridge American English Dictionary.

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