Read more
The culminating work of Catharine Read Arnold Williams, a well-known writer of pamphlets and other narrative prose,
Fall River recounts the famous murder of a mill girl and the subsequent trial of a popular minister of the period. Compellingly written, this earliest of documentary novels is both revealing of the social and cultural climate of early nineteenth century industrial America, and a landmark in the history of religion in American popular culture.
Summary
Catharine Williams (1787-1872) lived most of her life in Rhode Island, where she supported herself and her daughter by a productive literary career. Her most compelling work, Fall River, last published in 1833, recreates a notorious incident in the ill-fated town of Fall River, Massachusetts: the trial of a Methodist minister for the murder of a pregnant mill worker whom it was suspected he had seduced. Williams's investigative report offers a vivid contemporary view of the lives of poor "factory girls" and of clerical corruption in the industrial towns of early New England. While based in fact, the book raises themes of sexual and religious hypocrisy and exploitation that may be compared with those of novels like The Coquette, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and The Scarlet Letter. At the same time, the author's mixture of journalism, biography, fiction, and exhortation makes this "authentic narrative" an unusual challenge to traditional notions of literary form and yields fresh insights into the nature of early American women's writing.
Additional text
"The texts chosen form an extremely interesting and quite varied group, and the prospect of having them in book form is exciting. Scholars and students will be much richer for it."--Carolyn Dinshaw, University of California, Berkeley
