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/lp/university-of-illinois-press/an-idle-heroine-in-industrious-times-elizabeth-stuart-phelps-the-story-p0g1ozg4vx
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- Publisher
- University of Illinois Press
- Copyright
- Copyright © Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
- ISSN
- 1940-5103
Abstract
Essays HILLAR Y BETH ROEGELEIN An Idle Heroine in Industrious Times: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ The Story of Avis Elizabeth Stuart Phelps worships work. In her wildly popular firs Th t n e ovel, Gates Ajar (1868), Phelps imagines Heaven itself as a utopian workplace where every person will not only find eternal employment, but eternal success. If, as the saying goes, there ain’t no rest for the wicked, Phelps clarifies that there ain’t no rest for the righteous, either. “If a talent is given” on Earth, the character Winifred Forcythe explains, “use will be found for it” in Heaven. Winifred tells the townspeople i Thn e Gates Ajar how God will re-embody and re-employ them after death. “Employ” is the very word Winifred uses when explaining to a young inventor how his “fancy for machinery will be employed in some way” in heaven. Death will be good for business, Winifred implies, predicting that the engineer “will be more successful inventing there”—in heaven—“than [he] ever will here” (105–06). Moreover, workers in every field will be blessed with the same eternity of work. Artists will be so busy painting in the afterlife that “there will be whole planets turned into galleries
Journal
American Literary Realism – University of Illinois Press
Published: Mar 31, 2022