Dorothy Canfield (Fisher)
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Parrington, Vernon Louis
A clever dramatizer of the obvious: believes in the Woman Triumphant, and discovers in the right education of children—particularly girls—the solution of all problems. Two main themes:
1. A protest against the demands of “social life.” The Squirrel Cage (1912). A contribution to the problem novel. A William Morris suggestion of the sufficiency of handicraft as an escape from social demands. An arraignment of the American home where the father scarcely knows the children and the mother is shut away from the outside world.
The Bent Twig (1915). A study of university community life—the struggle between plain living and high thinking—of social pleasure and no thinking.
2. The defense of the village. The belief that community fellowship—a gathering to watch a century plant bloom—breeds an artistic spirit finer than old-world art and culture can offer. Especially a Vermont town is ideal for the proper bringing up of children. The Brimming Cup (1920). A story of the right bringing up of children. Rough Hewn (1922). The love of art and travel which leads inevitably to a Vermont town and marriage. Raw Material (1923). Sketches. The point of view given in “Paul Meyer”—the folly of thinking that a normal girl should prefer philology to matrimony.