Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (August 31, 1844January 28, 1911) was an early feminist American author and intellectual who challenged traditional Christian beliefs of the afterlife, challenged women's traditional roles in marriage and family, and advocated clothing reform for women.

In 1868, three years after the Civil War ended, she published The Gates Ajar, which depicted the afterlife as a place replete with the comforts of domestic life and where families would be reunited—along with family pets—through eternity.

In her 40s, Phelps broke convention again when she married a man 17 years her junior. Later in life she urged women to burn their corsets. Her later writing focused on feminine ideals and women's financial dependence on men in marriage. She was the first woman to present a lecture series at Boston University. During her lifetime she was the author of 57 volumes of fiction, poetry and essays. In all of these works, she challenged the prevailing view that woman's place and fulfilment resided in the home. Instead, Phelps' work depicted women as succeeding in nontraditional careers as physicians, ministers, and artists.

Near the end of her life, Phelps became very active in the animal rights movement. Her novel, Trixy, published in 1904, was constructed around the topic of vivisection and the effect this kind of training had on doctors. The book became a standard polemic against experimentation on animals.

Early life

Elizabeth (August 31, 1844January 28, 1911) was born in Boston, Massachusetts to American Congregational minister Austin Phelps and Elizabeth Wooster Stuart Phelps (1815–1852). Her baptismal name was Mary Gray Phelps, after a close friend of her mother's. Her mother wrote the Kitty Brown series of books for girls under the pen name H. Trusta. Then eight years old, Mary Gray asked to be renamed in honor of her mother.

Her father Austin Phelps was a widely respected Congregational minister and educator. He was pastor of the Pine Street Congregational Church until 1848, when he accepted a position as the Chair of Rhetoric at Andover Theological Seminary. He met Elizabeth Phelps that same year and they were married in the fall. The family moved to Boston

Phelps received an upper class education, attending the Abbot Academy and Mrs. Edwards' School for Young Ladies.

Spiritualist novels

thumb|Ward, circa 1910

Ward wrote three Spiritualist novels. The first, The Gates Ajar, became her most famous. It took her two years to write. She wrote later that after she spent more than two years revising it, "I could have said it by heart." The book was finally published after the end of the Civil War. In it, she writes about a girl named Mary Cabot, whose brother was killed during the Civil War. The grief-stricken girl becomes convinced that she and her brother will be reunited in an afterlife

She received thousands of letters in response to the first book. She wrote two more books on the same topic, Between the Gates and Beyond the Gates. She then wrote a novella about animal rights titled Loveliness. Phelps said she wrote The Gates Ajar to comfort a generation of women who were devastated by the losses of their loved ones following the Civil War and who found no comfort in traditional religion. Phelps' vision of heaven made the book a run-away best seller. She later built on the success of the first Gates book with a series of other books that featured the word "Gates" in their titles and which continued to reinforce her views of the afterlife as a place with gardens, comfortable front porches, and finely built houses.

The Gates Ajar inspired works by other authors in the following decades, such as Mark Twain's parody "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven" (1909) and Louis B. Pendleton's Wedding Garment: A Tale of the Afterlife (1894). The final novel in the Gates series was also adapted into a stage play in 1901 titled Within the Gates.

Advocate for social reform

While writing these and other popular stories, she became an advocate through her lectures and other work for social reform, temperance, and women's emancipation. She was also involved in clothing reform for women, and in 1874 urged them to burn their corsets.

A key influence on her writings on women's rights, especially her beliefs regarding marriage, were the works of John Stuart Mill, such as Mill's 1869 essay The Subjection of Women.

Social advocacy was also incorporated in Phelp's various children's literature publications as she did not attempt to conceal the inequities of the era's class structure. In stories such as "Bobbit's Hotel", "One Way to Get An Education", and "Mary Elizabeth", Phelps directly illustrates the impact of poverty on children. In "Bobbit's Hotel", the title character dies in an effort to shelter two young orphans. "Mary Elizabeth" depicts a young homeless girl's choices between theft and begging as a means of survival. "One Way to Get An Education" depicts a child laborer's desire for a better life than mill work and subsequent decision to self-injure in order to attain an education.

Later work

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and her husband co-authored two Biblical romances in 1890 and 1891. Her autobiography, Chapters from a Life, was published in 1896 after being serialized in McClure's. She also wrote a large number of essays for Harper's Magazine. a cause she supported later in life. Writer, feminist, and animal rights advocate Carol J. Adams describes the novel as "important and timely."

Selected works

  • Ellen's Idol (1864)
  • Gypsy Breynton and three sequels (1866–1867)
  • Mercy Gliddon's Work (1866)
  • The Gates Ajar (1868)
  • Men, Women, and Ghosts (1869)
  • The Trotty Book (1870)
  • Hedged In (1870)
  • The Silent Partner (1871)
  • What to Wear (1873)
  • Poetic Studies (1875)
  • The Story of Avis (1877)
  • An Old Maid's Paradise (1879)
  • Sealed Orders (1879)
  • Doctor Zay (1882)
  • Beyond the Gates (1883)
  • Songs of the Silent World (1884)
  • The Madonna of the Tubs (1886)
  • Jack the Fisherman (1887)
  • The Gates Between (1887)
  • The struggle for Immortality (1889)
  • Austin Phelps, A Memoir (1891)
  • Donald Marcy (1893)
  • A Singular Life (1895)
  • Chapters from a Life (1896)
  • The Supply at Saint Agatha's (1896)
  • The Story of Jesus Christ (1897)
  • Within the Gates (1901)
  • Avery (1902)
  • Confessions of a Wife (1902, as Mary Adams)
  • Trixy (1904)
  • Walled In (1907)
  • The Whole Family (collaborative novel with eleven other authors, 1908)
  • Jonathan and David (1909)
  • The Empty House and Other Stories (1910)

With Herbert Dickinson Ward

  • Come Forth (1891)
  • A Lost Hero (1890)
  • The Master of the Magicians (1890)

See also

  • Corset controversy
  • Women's Rights Historic Sites

References

Further reading

  • 28 stories by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (pdf online)
  • authorandbookinfo.com
  • – including works credited as Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and as Mary Adams