Elizabeth Stuart Phelps would have been 175 years old today. Born in 1844, who was she?
A more fitting question, in my opinion, is why haven’t more people heard of her? The woman published over 28 books in her lifetime, not to mention pamphlets, essays, and letters. See my bibliography of her writings at the bottom of the post. You can check out many of her works online here.
Born Mary Gray on August 31, 1844, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps took her mother’s name when she started writing. Her mother was a successful author in her own time who died when Elizabeth was eight; Elizabeth Phelps (the mother) the first was a talented writer before it was socially acceptable for women to be thought of as artists, so she was expected to run a family while penning stories that the public couldn’t get enough of. Elizabeth (the second) writes of her mother that “Her last book and her last baby came together, and killed her.” (Chapters 12).
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was raised in Massachusetts where her father was a professor at the Andover Seminary of Theology, and where her mother wrote until she couldn't. Because of her gender Elizabeth was barred from attending the seminary, so she was educated at the “girls school” and received lessons from the seminary’s professor of theology. It’s worth noting that Elizabeth identifies herself as having issued from a brilliant family. She begins her memoir by describing her mother, the famous author, and her grandfather Moses Stuart who was celebrated as a pioneering scholar of biblical interpretation. She calls her father a “Christian scholar” in the department of rhetoric whose “appreciation of the uses and graces of language very early descended like a mantle on me,” (Chapters 17).
It seems unsurprising, then, that Elizabeth Stuart Phelps would become a prolific, wildly successful author of her day. Her first novel The Gates Ajar (1848) was one of the bestselling novels of the nineteenth century (Stokes, vi). Phelps started writing it during the Civil War. She was deeply religious and was frustrated by the way that Christianity provided abstract, cold comfort to the “sorrowing women” who had lost brothers, husbands, fathers, and uncles in the nation’s grisly war (The estimated death toll is 750,000 soldiers and civilians; see James McPherson’s The War That Forged a Nation: Why The Civil War Still Matters, page 54).
Suggesting that The Gates Ajar was popular is an understatement; it went through over fifty printings in the nineteenth century. The novel presents itself as a series of journal entries written by protagonist Mary Cabot, a white middle class New Englander who is devastated upon finding out that her brother has been “shot dead” in the war (3). When Mary’s aunt hears of her niece’s bereavement, Winifred Forceythe and her young daughter Faith come to visit. Winifred’s minister husband died three years prior, so her pious wisdom makes an impression on Mary. Soon Winifred is comforting Mary and strengthening her niece’s wavering faith by` teaching her how to believe in an afterlife where loved ones are reunited. What holds the gates to heaven ajar? The bible (which Winifred teaches Mary to interpret without the help of male clergy) and reason (which enables Winifred to teach Mary correctly).
Suffice it to say that The Gates Ajar reflects Elizabeth’s burgeoning interest in supporting (white, middle-class or aspiring middle-class) women. She hoped to assuage their grief with this first novel, but throughout her career she also advocated for women’s entitlement to education, intellectual activities, and creative pursuit.
The Gates Ajar was such a smash hit that Elizabeth wrote two more “Gates” novels; The Gates Between and Beyond the Gates. This trilogy is a protofeminist revision of Christianity as well as grief literature that aims to comfort. But it is also obsessed with imagining what heaven will be like and framing it as a better place than earth, making the Gates trilogy seem like speculative fiction (“speculative” is a contemporary umbrella term for science fiction and fantasy). Elizabeth also wrote a medical novel (The Story of Avis) about a female patient and her doctor; she advocated for women’s education, dress reform, and animal rights (her novel Trixy has been studied as an “anti-vivisection” novel that protests the use of animals for medical research).
Other important tidbits to consider: at age 44, Phelps shocked the establishment by marrying someone 17 years younger than she. Her marriage to Herbert Dickinson Ward does not seem to have been a particularly happy one. Although they collaborated on a few writing projects, they eventually spent most of their time apart. In fact, Herbert wasn’t even present when Elizabeth died. I chuckled at Elizabeth’s line, in a letter to a friend, that “Marriage is such tremendous material for a novel-writer!” (Bennett, 83).
Elizabeth was also friends with John Greenleaf Whittier, whose books I often use to make into journals. On a personal note, I feel a strange kinship with Phelps due to the fact that she was often plagued by sleeplessness. Later in her life, in a letter to a doctor friend, she describes herself as a “professional invalid” who was “torn to shreds by insomnia” (25 January, 1884; 3rd Feb 1884). She was chronically ill for much of her adult life, but refused most medicine. As an ardent supporter of “homeopathic” medicine, she would not take drugs to alleviate her suffering.
As a sometimes insomniac, I feel her statement that “I suffer more from the future, even than from the present;” Phelps was anxious and depressed about things she couldn’t control like the recent death of her brother in 1883 and the added responsibilities this placed on her (Tuttle, "18 November, 1884"). Things seem to get pretty bad for her. Elizabeth writes that “it is a moral impossibility for me to get any sleep in any house, hospital, or boarding house, hotel or even under a friend’s roof- there is none to be had, except where I can control every noise indoors and out….Insomnia is my chief disease; perhaps the only one- I know of no other; that, and its effects on the brain” (Tuttle, "Thanksgiving day, 1884"). Imagine how I shuddered when she described how “the habitual rack of insomnia closed in” as she watched the moon light turn to sunrise night after night (Chapters 229). I, too had characterized my experiences with insomnia as torture; Elizabeth writes that “One slips into the door of the torture chamber, thinking it to be the entrance to some commonplace apartment, perhaps some pleasant room with broad views and easy exit. One turns to step out, on some natural errand- then, behold the bars, the bolts, the locks” (Chapters, 229). I feel that, Elizabeth. We don’t want to be there, but we’re trapped, trapped. There is an eerie sisterhood, strange affiliation I feel with this forgotten author who knew well the descent into anxious, mad, perpetual sleeplessness.
(Part of me empathizes with her, and is impressed that she was ever able to be creatively productive. But another part of me knows that she was lucky to have the option to be an invalid and not leave her house. In that time period, black women, free or newly freed, would have had no option but to physically work, often to the detriment of their health or in such ways that led to early demise. Lower class white women would also have had to have worked in order to feed themselves and their families).
I could go on and on about this fascinating author who was a household staple in the nineteenth century, but who the general public has little knowledge of today. Go read some of her work. Hopefully, you might agree that she is an important writer who, in spite of her gender and failing health, refused to be voiceless. In closing, I’ll leave you words she penned at age 53:
“I am the one who does the calling, who asks the questions now. But strong silence answers me.”
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ bibliography:
The Gates Ajar, 1868
Men, Women, and Ghosts, 1869
Hedged In, 1870
The Silent Partner, 1871
The Story of Avis, 1871
What to Wear?, 1873
The Trotty Book, 1874
Poetic Studies, 1875
Sealed Orders, 1879
An Old Maid’s Paradise, 1879
Friends: A Duet, 1881
Doctor Zay, 1882
Beyond the Gates, 1883
Songs of the Silent World, 1884
The Madonna of the Tubs, 1886
The Gates Between, 1887
Jack the Fisherman, 1887
The Struggle for Immortality: essays, 1889
The Master of the Magicians collaboration with Herbert D Ward, 1890
Come Forth!, collaboration with Herbert D. Ward, 1891
Austin Phelps, a memoir, 1891
A Lost Hero, collaboration with Herbert D. Ward, 1893
Donald Marcy, 1893
A Singular Life: A Novel 1895
Chapters from a Life, 1896
The Supply at St. Agatha’s, 1897
The Story of Jesus Christ: an interpretation, 1897
Within the Gates, 1901
Confessions of a Wife, 1902, written under the pseudonym Mary Adams
Trixy, 1904
A Chariot of Fire, 1905
Walled In, 1907
The Whole Family, 1908 (this strange collaborative novel, written by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Henry James, Mary E. Wilkins, William Dean Howells, Henry Van Dyke, and others, is comprised of chapters written by different authors).
Jonathan and David, 1909
The Empty House and Other Stories, 1910
Works cited in this entry
Bennett, Mary Angela. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1939.
Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart. Chapters from a Life. Houghton, Mifflin, 1897.
Stokes, Claudia. "Introduction." The Gates Ajar, ed. by Elizabeth Duquette and Claudia Stokes. Penguin Classics, 2019 (1868). xvii-xxv.
Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart. Chapters from a Life. Houghton, Mifflin, 1897.
Tuttle, Jennifer. "Letters from Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (Ward) to S. Weir Mitchell, M.D., 1884-1897." Legacy. 17.1, 2000. 83-94.