Janet Malcolm on a Small Body of Early Twentieth Century Fiction

Janet Malcolm reaches into the archives of her childhood and discusses a hardly-known American novelist in an essay from the New York Review of Books. Malcolm reviews seven novels by Gene Stratton-Porter, who, for obvious reasons, Malcolm presumed to be a man. However, the gender of this author was not the only circulating misconception. Geneva Stratton-Porter “was a plump, bossy woman of enormous energy and enterprise.” Though some may think of her as a champion of the environment and nature, she is in fact far more like John Calvin than John Muir. As Malcolm’s survey of Stratton-Porter’s fiction reveals, this authoress was a champion of the Protestant work ethic and a staunch proponent of female propiety. Stratton-Porter’s work varied in quality, but her work is united by her uniquely capitalistic view of the formerly bucolic America.