Life and Gabriella

Ellen Glasgow (1873- 1945) was a Pulitzer Prize winning American novelist. Her literary career included 20 novels, a collection of poems, short stories, and a book of literary criticism. Her autobiography, A Woman Within, appeared posthumously in 1954. During her career her female characters became more dominant and her views of women's rights could be seen in her work. Glasgow wrote a women's trilogy including Virginia (1913), Life and Gabriella (1916), and Barren Ground (1925). Each of her Virginian heroines had a fate determined by her response to the patriarchal code of feminine behavior. In Virginia a southern lady is abandoned by her husband when he becomes successful. Gabriella is also abandoned by a weak husband, but Gabriella becomes a self-sufficient, single-mother. By the conclusion of the novel she has married well.