Constance Fenimore Woolson's 'Miss Grief' and How to (Re-) Read Realistically

Faye Halpern demonstrates that situating even well-known nineteenth-century fiction within a history of reading can open up new interpretations. Halpern interprets Constance Fenimore Woolson’s short story “Miss Grief” as... [ view full abstract ]

Faye Halpern demonstrates that situating even well-known nineteenth-century fiction within a history of reading can open up new interpretations. Halpern interprets Constance Fenimore Woolson’s short story “Miss Grief” as a meditation on different models of reading, showing how it dramatizes both extensive reading and intensive re-reading styles as well as different modes of textual ownership. Yet just as Woolson is unable to jettison the sentimental plot of self-sacrifice, so she can’t divest herself of older practices of reading, and Halpern shows how Woolson appears to pit these older reading styles against newer ones, only to reveal a conflicted, latent allegiance to older literary modes, despite her and her fellow realists’ efforts to disavow elements of the literary past.