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ОглавлениеAN INTRODUCTION
QUAKER ROMANCES
Quakers and their Testimonies
The Religious Society of Friends, as Quakers are officially known, began in the 1640s in the North of England, at the end of the Civil War. George Fox (1624-1691) was the primary founder of the movement, though he was supported by many other religious seekers in this turbulent time. His ascent of Pendle Hill in May 1652 is considered “a critical moment in Quaker history as it marked the idea of starting the new church” (Dandelion 2008: 7). Fox’s movement soon stood out due to several features that seemed revolutionary and threatening. Above all was the belief that God had placed within every person an Inward or Inner Light that they could turn to, which allowed for a direct relationship with God. The consequences of putting this belief into practice were enormous. There was no longer a need for ministers, pastors, priests, and the like, as Friends required no intermediary with God. With the discarding of ministers came, too, the irrelevance of sacraments (Dandelion 2008: 9). Scripture became secondary, used to confirm individual revelations.
All this was seen by members of the Church of England, and even the Puritan rebels who had won the Civil War, as potentially destabilizing for the status quo. According to Quakers, all were equal under God. Quakers refused to pay church tithes, doff their hats in front of authorities, or use titles. Besides, they would not swear oaths, as they believed God wanted humans to always tell the truth, not just on special occasions. Early Friends also objected to using the names of days and months which derived from pagan gods and used numbers instead (Dandelion 2008: 12). For example, Sunday became First Day, and January, First Month. Their wedding ceremonies were also different from those of other Christian groups, as were their Meetings for Worship, which were mostly carried out in silence, without prepared sermons, readings from Scripture or the singing of hymns. The apparent lack of respect to conventions and “superiors” added to the perception that they were troublesome people. Since they were at the same time rapidly attracting members, authorities tried to stop them from growing. Their meetings were banned, and thousands were cast into prison.
Their concern with the so-called Testimonies, nowadays often referred to as SPICES (Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Stewardship), made Quaker deviations from cultural norms even more conspicuous. 1 Their Testimony of Simplicity led them to renounce outward markers of wealth or high status. Consequently, they chose to dress in a simple manner, and to wear clothes that had no embellishments and were made in fabrics of dull colors, often brown or gray. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many Quakers, most notably John Woolman (1720-1772), also refused to wear dyes and fabrics that came from slave labor (Dandelion 2008: 25). Quakers decided that their speech, too, would remain plain. In the seventeenth century the English began to use the grammatical form “you” in all cases, singular or plural, a feature that characterizes Modern English. Quakers chose to retain the forms of Middle English pronouns for the singular (thou, thee, thy, thine, thyself), which in practice had been kept primarily only when referring to a person of lower social standing, such as a servant (Hamm 2003: 21-22).
Their Peace Testimony made them abhor war, which brought them reprisals, as seventeenth-century England did not recognize the concept of conscientious objection. However, the concern with Integrity would bring them economic rewards in the long run, especially after the passing of the Act of Toleration in 1689 which granted freedom of worship to nonconformists in Britain. In fact, as time went by, Quakers became very prominent as businessmen and bankers (Dandelion 2008: 24) because people trusted them in business transactions and as money lenders. They also invented the fixed price for merchandise at a time when haggling was the standard in business. Quakers believed that it was immoral to charge one person more than another for the same thing. This revolutionized commerce and drew in customers.
With the expansion of the British Empire, the Religious Society of Friends saw its transportation to America. The first Quakers who came to the American colonies, in the 1650s, were missionaries who faced stiff resistance, particularly in Puritan Boston, where four were hanged (Dandelion 2008: 89-90). However, in the colonies of Rhode Island and North Carolina, where freedom of religion had been established, they quickly found a foothold. The need for a refuge for the Quakers being persecuted in Britain weighed heavily on William Penn, an English Quaker. His deceased father had made a large loan to the government, and the debt was now owed to the son. Penn requested payment in the form of a grant of land; consequently, the Religious Society of Friends saw its first-scale transportation to America. In 1681 the colony of Pennsylvania, the so-called “Holy Experiment” (Dandelion 2008: 15; Hamm 2003: 27), was founded by William Penn as a refuge for Quakers. Penn’s belief in Equality, Peace, and Integrity led him to negotiate a series of purchases of land from Native Americans (the Delaware or Lenni Lenape), despite having the land grant from the King. Penn also negotiated several treaties to maintain peace, so there would be no wars with the original inhabitants as had been the case in other colonies (Hamm 2003: 28). The Holy Experiment, however, was not free from contradictions, as Penn himself was the owner of several slaves. Notwithstanding these and other incongruities, and despite the persecution they endured in the New England colonies, American Quakers kept growing in number, their communities establishing strongholds during the Colonial period not only in Pennsylvania, but also in places like Nantucket Island or, as said, North Carolina. The capital of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, known as the “City of Brotherly Love,” was, by the time of the American Revolution, one of the largest and most prosperous cities in what would become the United States. Quaker strongholds like Nantucket and New Bedford, to cite another example of the prosperity brought about by Quakers, became the centers of the whale industry in the eighteenth century. At the time of the American Revolution, whale oil was the most valuable commodity exported to England from Massachusetts and Quakers supplied the whale oil to light London’s streets at night.
New opportunities opened up after the Revolutionary War and the passing of the Northwest Ordinance (1787) by the Confederation Congress. The Northwest Ordinance provided a method for admitting new states to the Union from the Northwest Territory. Many Quakers began to move to the newly created Territory and, later on, to the states that sprang from it. They were particularly attracted by the fact that the Northwest Ordinance had banned slavery in those states (Hamm 2003: 39). Indeed, by the end of the eighteenth century many American Quakers were already convinced that slavery could not be accepted by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Hamm 2003: 34-35). Their loathing of slavery led them to move away from slave states, most notably North Carolina, but also to actively engage in the anti-slavery movement and in the Underground Railroad (Dandelion 2008: 29-30).
The Testimony of Equality also made them believe that women and men should have the same rights within a Quaker Meeting; when prompted by the Inner Light, both could equally speak up and minister to others (Hamm 2003: 184). Women became itinerant ministers, and left to visit other meetings, leaving the childcare and household duties behind, sometimes for months at a time. Thus, Quaker women got used to travelling far and wide, even across the Atlantic, speaking in public, and seeing their contributions respected. In early Quakerism, Meetings for Business were segregated: men held theirs, and women handled their own (Dandelion 2008: 22). Though the issues dealt with by women were usually less important, that women had authority over any businesses was radical in the seventeenth century; besides, being in charge of their own business meetings gave women experience in running organizations. For decades there were partitions in Quaker Meeting houses so that men and women could conduct their Meetings for Business separately. Those spaces became a cradle for women’s rights associations, and Quaker women rose as “mothers of feminism” (Hamm 2003: 184).
Indeed, Quaker women had an important role in their communities that allowed them to see themselves as equal, which explains their active involvement in a number of reformist groups in the nineteenth century and, most notably, in the abolitionist cause. By 1840, several renowned American Quaker women like Lucretia Mott, her sister Martha Coffin, Abigail Kelley, and Susan B. Anthony, among others, realized the need to work not only in favor of the abolition of slavery, but also to attain the suffrage for women. Their contribution to female suffrage became paramount, until in 1920, and thanks to the invaluable role played by Alice Paul, another Quaker (Hamm 2003: 188), American women were granted the right to vote.
Given their history, it is no wonder that the allure of Quakerism for writers and readers alike is great and has been so for decades. Anna Breiner Caulfield’s Quakers in Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography (1993) offers a thorough compilation of works that depict Quakers in fiction. James Emmett Ryan’s Imaginary Friends: Representing Quakers in American Culture, 1650-1950 (2009) is, like Caufield’s book, out of date by a few decades, but Ryan’s volume has the merit of showing the appeal of Quakerism not only in literary works, but in American popular culture at large. Jennifer M. Connerley’s Ph.D. thesis, Friendly Americans: Representing Quakers in the United States, 1850-1920 (2006a) also examines popular representations of Quakers. More recently published is Farah Mendleson’s Creating Memory: Historical Fiction and the English Civil Wars (2020), where there is a section dedicated to the analysis of literary works which feature Quaker characters in the years of the English Civil Wars. Other scholars have more narrowly focused on the representation of specific Quaker distinctive signs in both literature and popular culture, like Jennifer Connerley, who has turned to the significance of the Quaker bonnet in two papers: “Fighting Quakers: A Jet Black Whiteness” (2006c) and “Quaker Bonnets and the Erotic Feminine in American Popular Culture” (2006b). The latter traces widespread popular representations of Quaker women’s bonnets from the 1850s through the 1930s in fiction, image, film, and music.
When Americans in this century think of Quakers, many will recall the image of a Quaker man wearing a broad-brimmed hat on a box of oatmeal. For over a century, images of Quakers have been used to sell many different products, often with absolutely no connection with anyone in the Society of Friends, but simply because Quakers acquired a reputation as honest people. Quakers have not only been preyed upon by a consumerist society for their peculiar image or the waves of positive associations that emanate from their bonnets and broad-brimmed hats. Their spiritual values and their social commitments have set them apart as special people. As is often noted, “Quakers had an influence beyond their numbers” (Dandelion 2008: 1). Certainly, their influence on many historical processes and social movements has been profound, and so has been their presence in American popular culture, where they are frequently presented as pioneers of the most noble causes and beacons of moral integrity at times when the nation has discussed issues of paramount importance like the abolition of slavery, gender equality, pacifism and even ecology.
Despite salient continuities, one should nonetheless note that Quakerism has diverged and splintered since its inception in the seventeenth century. Plain dress and speech have long been abandoned by most Friends, as have the strict rules that determined who was to be disowned, for example, for marrying outside the Quaker Meeting or for disobeying the Elders’ admonitions. Today, there is a Quaker population worldwide of approximately 380,000 (Staff 2017: n.p.) belonging to different branches which, in America, resulted from several nineteenth-century splits, though the separations did not affect British Friends in the same way. In brief, there are three branches of Quakers today (Dandelion 2008: 17-18). First, there are Evangelical Friends Churches which have pastors and give great importance to Scripture. This is the largest group worldwide and “they represent an important and aggressive strand of American Quakerism today” (Hamm 2003: 5). Second, there is a small group of Conservative Friends who still adhere to silent worship and plain dress. Finally, there are Liberal Friends, who are the most doctrinally permissive about matters of belief, and consequently include theist and even non-theist Quakers. They tend to be ideologically more progressive and to involve themselves as activists in various causes like disarmament, anti-racism, or environmental issues, to cite a few examples.
Many portrayals of Quakerism are bound to be loosely based on popularly held stereotypes rather than on actual Friends and they disregard the diversity that has existed within Quakerism since the nineteenth century. There is therefore a risk in approaching those, at times, inaccurate portrayals of Quakerism, especially if whoever deals with them is, like myself, an outsider to Quakerism, and who, unintentionally, may be further reproducing incorrect representations. On my behalf I can only say that I am conscious of that danger and have done my best to avoid it. This book’s main goal is to study the reasons why Quakers have come to inhabit the pages of many a romance, not to further exoticize or stereotype them.
Quaker Romances: A Subgenre within Christian Romances
The genre of popular romance has not been immune to the appeal of the Religious Society of Friends. The goal of this book is precisely to explore that attraction, although the analysis must first take into account the existence of a subgenre within the field of the romance, that is, the group of so-called Christian or Inspirational romances. Not all the romances that feature Quaker protagonists are Christian romances, however, though many are. Consequently, some notes on the terminology that I will be using to refer to the various types of romances considered in this book seem to be called for.
As a cover term, I will use the category Quaker romances to refer to all the romances with Quaker protagonists, that is, those in which either the heroine or the hero, or both, belong to the Religious Society of Friends. This is therefore the broadest category I will be using. Within it, there are two other categories: Christian or Inspirational Quaker romances, and secular Quaker romances.
Christian romances (often referred to in the romance community as “inspirationals”) are those romances published by Evangelical Christian publishing houses. As defined in “Inspirational Romance” by Rebecca Barrett-Fox and Kristen Donnelly (2021), they show the characters’ relationship with God, and a lack of detail about theology or religious ritual; they display no sexual contact (which is why they are also referred to as “clean” or “sweet” romances) and they tend to present women characters in traditional gender roles (though heroes may be less traditionally masculine than men in secular romances); finally, they portray a world where there is a brokenness of some kind, but the narrative proves that faith in God will eventually restore the said brokenness.
According to Barrett-Fox and Donnelly, the term “inspirational romance” is used by U.S. booksellers to refer to romances “targeted at conservative, evangelical, Protestants” (2021: 192) and it is “synonymous, in terms of marketing in bookstores, with ‘Christian romances’” (2021: 206). Kenneth Paradis has more generally defined inspirational fiction (therefore including romances and other types of narratives) as a group of novels that can be read “homiletically, not as replacements for scripture, but as lenses that can mediate and focus certain aspects of scripture, guiding its integration into readers’ lives” (2020: 76; emphasis in the original), hence the use of the term “inspirational” to refer to them. Besides, Paradis, like Barrett-Fox and Donnelly, has pointed out that inspirational fiction constitutes a genre in which “the characters spend a lot less time having, or fantasizing about, or talking about, sex, and, instead, spend a lot more time worrying about the relationship of their romantic lives to their spiritual lives and its moral entailments” (2020: 73). However, some inspirational romances happen to deviate from the general rule that sex and taboo issues such as rape, abortion, murder or infidelity should not be dealt with; these have sometimes been grouped under the label “edgy inspirationals,” which I will also make use of.
Though the category “inspirational romances” has been typically applied to romances published by Evangelical publishing houses or the Christian imprints of publishing houses, it has been argued that “writers seeking to address other religions’ takes on romance should also be included in scholarship on ‘inspirational romance’” (Barrett-Fox and Donnelly 2021: 206). This would imply that scholarship on romances featuring non-Christian religious groups like Jews or Muslims should be rightly included within the category of inspirational romance. The romances analyzed in this book are, for the most part, Christian in a conventional interpretation of the term. However, as will be shown, some authors of the romances studied in this book are Quakers themselves, and at least one of them has had her works published by a Quaker publishing house. Their romances tend to deviate from conventional Christian romances in a number of ways, as my book will argue, but I nevertheless agree with Barrett-Fox and Donnelly that their works are, in their own way, inspirational fiction as well.
For their part, secular Quaker romances differ from Christian romances in that they are not restricted by the “closed-door” treatment to sexual acts, that is, they may be much opener in their depiction of sexual scenes, and their characters may also be more progressive in their behavior, the roles they perform and the moral principles that guide them. Their relationship with God may be outstanding, and their focus on the restorative power of faith of paramount importance, too, but there are also many cases of secular romances in which the characters’ belonging to the Religious Society of Friends only appears as a marker of exoticism, mentioned here and there and soon forgotten, because their faith adds little value to the characters’ motivations.
Within the romance industry, so-called inspirational or Christian romances are considered one of the bestselling subgenres (Barrett-Fox 2016: 348). In economic terms, the Christian market may be a “relatively thin slice of the romance market,” but Christian romance publishing is nevertheless “a vibrant one” (Markert 2016: 207), said to generate “upwards of $50 million in annual sales, which is not an insignificant sum” (Markert 2016: 261). Christian houses “initially entered the romance field in the mid- to late 1980s in response to the overt sexuality of secular romances flooding the market during the height of the romance revolution in the early to mid-1980s” (Markert 2016: 207-208). Matthew Kapell and Suzanne Becker concur that “[t]he rise in acceptance of IRF [Inspirational romance fiction] was the result of a backlash among fundamentalist Christians against the onslaught of sexual permissiveness” and the “growing feminist movement” that advocated women’s right to move out of domesticity and “into the workplace with equal status to men” (2005: 151). Similarly, Barrett-Fox and Donnelly agree that it was in the 1980s that Christian romances underwent a transformation caused by major changes in American society:
the white conservative Protestants who make up the bulk of the market for evangelical Christian media began to mobilize politically around opposition to policies and cultural shifts that they saw as threatening the “traditional family” and, by extension, American civilization: advances in abortion rights and access to abortion, nofault divorce, gay rights, and (more covertly) desegregation […]. (2021: 194)
As happens in every cultural field, race also plays an important role in the rise of Christian romances. Barrett-Fox and Donnelly (2021) note that major publishing houses of Christian romances include few novels by or about people of color. If one is intent on reading books that deal with the romantic experience of people of color or interracial couples, one must look for such books among the novels published by imprints that focus on racial and ethnic minorities or by presses that concentrate on women of color, or by smaller presses. Harlequin and other major publishing houses are definitely not the answer. Thus, Harlequin’s Love Inspired line has few books which feature people of color as main characters, Barrett-Fox and Donnelly assure; Harlequin’s imprint on characters of color, Kimani, launched New Spirit in the mid-2000s promising to release African American Christian fiction, but it failed to do so, and its final books came out in May 2019 (Barrettt-Fox and Donnelly 2021: 202). Though there are few African American writers publishing African American Christian fiction, Beverly Jenkin being one of those exceptions, the situation is even more lamentable in the case of other minorities: “for readers seeking depictions of Latinx or Asian American characters, the choices are relatively few” (Barrett-Fox and Donnelly 2021: 202).
Despite its importance in both economic and cultural terms, the field of Christian romances has received little in-depth analysis. In 2005, Matthew Kapell and Suzanne Becker stated that “while there [was] considerable historic criticism of the secular romance fiction market, few [scholars] have ventured into the magnetism of the IRF [Inspirational romance fiction] market” (147). Years later, Barret-Fox and Donnelly present a similar picture, confirming that there is still “relatively little scholarship published on Christian romance novels,” adding that it comprises “only two books […][,] three book chapters, and fewer than a dozen articles” (2021: 204-205). Alternatively, when it has been studied, the field has been approached in a number of biased ways. John Markert, for example, refers to Peter Darbyshire’s article, “The Politics of Love: Harlequin Romances and the Christian Right” (2002), as proof of those prejudiced approaches; in particular, he criticizes Darbyshire’s assessment of the field as based on only “one Harlequin Love Inspired novel, Heiress” (Markert 2016: 212). Barrett-Fox and Donnelly also point out that the existing scholarship tends to focus on “the genre’s messages about gender” and “how those messages resonate with broader evangelical teachings, or on the relationship between readers and their texts” (2021: 205). Barrett-Fox and Donnelly cite as examples the articles written by Laura Clawson (2005) and Neal Christopherson (1999), both of which show that “the messages about gender tend toward the conservative” (2021: 205), and Peter Darbyshire’s already referred to 2002 article, where Christian romances are presented as nothing but “Religious Right propaganda” (Barrett-Fox and Donnelly 2021: 205).
Notwithstanding the lack of proper critical attention, the popularity of Christian or inspirational romances in the past few decades, especially of novels featuring Amish protagonists (amply studied by Valerie Weaver-Zercher in her 2013 monograph, Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels), is undeniable, as is, to a lesser extent, the appearance of various subgenres spawned by the Amish craze, that is, romances with Mennonites, Moravians, Quakers, etc. (Weaver-Zercher 2013: 3). Given those circumstances, there is a need to further analyze the reasons that have led, and continue leading, countless readers to these so-called “sweet” or “clean” romances. This book will therefore palliate that lack of scholarship on Christian romances to some extent, though, as mentioned, it will focus on Quaker romances regardless of whether they are Christian or secular. Besides, only historical romances (often referred to in the romance community as “historicals”) will be taken into account. Many Christian romances are indeed historicals, and that also happens to be the case when Quaker characters are portrayed. According to Barrett-Fox and Donnelly, “[t]he setting of the books in bygone days allows for readers dismayed at contemporary culture to run to a romantic (and rural) past in which they imagine life—including gender roles and ideas about romance, love, and sex—was simpler” (2021: 196). Barrett-Fox and Donnelly also point out that historical details in these novels are intended “as evidence for the authenticity of the story and the expertise of the author” (2021: 196). More poignantly, Lynn Neal’s assessment of Christian historicals leads her to state that these narratives “transform history from a series of random events into a carefully ordered design that demonstrates God’s romance with humanity” (2006: 184). To be more precise, given my exclusive concern with American historicals, they demonstrate God’s romance with America, and a White America at that, as will be proved.
Comparatively speaking, historical romances featuring Quaker protagonists, which comprise the primary sources selected for this book, constitute a small section of the Christian romance industry, but one that presents readers of inspirational fiction with a paradox that is worth exploring. Despite Darbyshire’s claim (2002) that Christian romances unequivocally promote the message of the Christian Right, this book’s thorough analysis of thirty-nine romances with Quaker protagonists will present a more complex reality. In general, the historical romances under scrutiny seem to offer a vision of U.S. history that stresses the country’s supposed origin as a White and Christian nation where men and women occupied separate spheres, in accordance with the tenets of the Christian Right. However, by featuring Quaker protagonists (typically females, though there are also some male main characters) they capitalize on the reputation of Quakerism, traditionally associated with progressive attitudes and the advancement of social justice, especially the abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage.
Admittedly, as will be seen, heroines of Quaker romances, like those of Christian romances more generally speaking, often devote substantial amounts of time to spiritual considerations, advocate the sanctity of marriage and promote traditional family values, but it is also true that their concern with social justice repeatedly leads them to engage in subversive behavior and to question the status quo in terms of class, gender issues, and, to some extent, race relations. To name but a few examples, these romances feature heroines that are active on the Underground Railroad, dare to challenge the hero on account of his contribution to slavery, demand the right to speak in public meetings or even enjoy a mixed-race romantic affair, if only temporarily. Close reading of these novels complicates an all too easy conclusion that Christian romances simply endorse the Christian Right agenda: they are a product of present-day America’s conflicted relationship with its history of abusive race and gender politics, and the result of the country’s tension between resisting and advocating social change. It should nevertheless be noted that gender roles and race relations are often treated differently in these religious romances. Authors tend to embrace many of the issues on the liberal feminist agenda, but their treatment of race relations is more ambiguous and even questionable.
Quaker Romances: The Corpus
In order to select my primary sources, I have followed three criteria. First, as already stated, I have selected romances whose main characters (both the hero and the heroine, or at least one of them) are Quakers and in which Quakerism plays an important role. As will be seen, many of the Quaker romances I have selected are Christian (also referred to as inspirational) and mostly adhere to the features of this subgenre. Others, however, are secular and may be more liberal in their treatment of sexual issues. I have nonetheless decided to include the latter in my corpus as well, even if this comprehensive approach may complicate my analysis of Quaker romances to some extent. My decision is based on the fact that it is often difficult to draw the line between Christian and secular romances when both have Quakerism featuring prominently in their plots. The publishing house responsible for the novels’ publication—whether Evangelical, Quaker or secular—and the authors’ religious backgrounds will determine which point the novels occupy in the continuum; still, there is a fluidity that is difficult to contain, and, for that reason, my analysis will incorporate romances with Quaker protagonists regardless of whether their portrayal of a Christian sect is drawn with a religious goal in mind or a secular one.
Second, I have limited my analysis to historical romances, i.e., romances that take place at some point in the period that goes from the seventeenth century to the Second World War. Besides being historicals, the romances selected for this book have been written in the last years of the twentieth century or in the first decades of the twenty-first century, with the exception of Janet Whitney’s Judith, which was published in 1944, that is, the year before the end of the Second World War. This means that I have not taken into consideration romances written in the nineteenth century despite their immense interest nor in the first decades of the twentieth century. For once, at the time when they were written—especially those published in the nineteenth-century—they were not historical, but contemporary. What is more, many of them have already been analyzed by James Emmett Ryan in his article “Imaginary Friends: Representing Quakers in Early American Fiction” (2003). In this article, Ryan demonstrates that Quakers were often used as moral exemplars in the American fiction of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ryan also argues that by World War I, the stereotypical Quakers used by nineteenth-century writers like Rebecca Harding Davis, Eliza Buckminster Lee, Harriet Beecher Stowe or Louisa May Alcott, among many others, came to be used much less frequently, as if Quakerism had outlived its usefulness as an exemplary model. This trend, however, is reversed at the end of the twentieth century, with the rise of Christian romances and the renewed interest in the Religious Society of Friends that this book attests to.
As an aside, I should add that I have only included historical novels which are set in one period alone or in two (as is the case of the Nantucket Legacy trilogy) but have dismissed romances which include time travelling or any other supernatural elements, as my focus is on the historical novel that tries to generate a sense of verisimilitude. This explains why a very interesting novel such as Grey Dawn. A Tale of Abolition and Union, by Nyri A. Bakkalian (2020), has been rejected. Though it features a Quaker heroine, Chloë Parker Stanton, who joins the Union army at the time of the Civil War, it is set in two periods: the nineteenth century and the year 2000, to which Chloë is magically transported. In the protagonist’s own words, since she is one of the novel’s first-person narrators: “Three days after the Battle of Gettysburg, all changed when I was flung to the far future” (2020: 1). Besides resorting to supernatural elements, the novel, as said, is partly set in the year 2000; therefore, in those sections that take place in the twenty-first century it ceases to be, strictly speaking, historical. It may nonetheless be of great interest to whoever is drawn to romances with Quaker characters, as it is the only one I have found that features a trans protagonist.
Third, I have focused on romances whose plots develop entirely or nearly so in America, or, if they do not, they are nonetheless intrinsically related to U.S. history. For these reasons, Janet Whitney’s The Quaker Bride (1953) has been rejected, as, despite its appealing title, it is more a Gothic novel of suspense set in the mid-nineteenth century than a romance, and besides most of the plot takes place in England; a well-known Quaker romance, Laura Kinsale’s 1992 Flowers from the Storm,2 has also been left aside, given that it is set in England during the Regency period; the first two volumes of Ann Turnbull’s Quaker trilogy have likewise been discarded, as they take place in England, whereas the third volume, Seeking Eden (2012c), which carries the protagonists to the colony of Pennsylvania, has been included.3 To give but one more example of the consequences of applying the previously given criteria, I should point out that the three volumes of Anna Schmidt’s The Peacemakers trilogy (2013-2014) have been chosen, because, although only the third one takes place in the U.S., the other two are dominated by WWII events whose importance for U.S. history is obvious.
It should be noticed that most of the romances that met the above criteria and that have been used as primary sources for this book, a total of thirty-one,4 have been published in the twenty-first century (thirty-two romances, to be precise), with only a few exceptions (eight, in particular). This surely must say something about the preferences of a certain part of the reading public in contemporary America, as well as about the interests of the romance publishing industry that caters to said public. But for now, rather than delving into those preferences and interests, I will call attention to the dates of publication. Janet Whitney’s Judith, published in 1944, is the earliest book, after which comes The Golden Raintree (1990) by Suzanne Simmons Guntrum; in 1993 appeared Spindrift, by Miranda Jarrett (Susan Holloway Scott), and Carla Kelly’s Miss Whittier Makes a List, published in 1994, followed suit. The Randolph Legacy, by Eileen Charbonneau, came out in 1997, while Sue McCracken’s four novels in the Friends series were published between 1994 and 2001.
All the other romances chosen for this analysis have been published in the twenty-first century, a fact whose causes need to be looked into. In a review of Faith and Fiction: Christian Literature in America Today (Gandolfo 2007), Barbara B. Moran states that the popularity of faith-based fiction, which mirrors general popular fiction in terms of genre choices and therefore includes mysteries, suspense, horror, and, needless to say, romances, “has increased greatly in the last decade” (2008: 222). Moran affirms that religious fiction was once sold almost exclusively in Christian bookstores, but in the first decade of the twenty-first century, “a wide-range of such fiction is stocked by all mainstream book sellers, and it constitutes the largest type of fiction available in the book departments of discount stores such as Wal-Mart”; moreover, Moran continues, its popularity is “also evident in public libraries where inspirational fiction is now one of the most frequently checked out types of material” (2008: 222-223).
Of all the twenty-first century romances studied in this book, Catherine Archibald’s Loving Charity (2000) was the first to come out, followed by Ann Turnbull’s Seeking Eden in 2006 and by Tucker’s Claim, by Sarah McCarty, in 2009; Mary Ellis’ The Quaker and the Rebel appeared in 2014; Lyn Cote’s nine novels were published between 2008 and 2016; Joanne Sundell’s Hearts Divided and Hearts Persuaded came out in 2010; the four novellas collected in A Quaker Christmas (by Lauralee Bliss, Ramona Cecil, Rachael Phillips, and Claire Sanders) came out in 2011, while the novellas put together in The Quakers of New Garden (by Claire Sanders, Ann Schrock, Jennifer Hudson Taylor, and Susette Williams) were published in 2012; Anna Schmidt’s The Peacemakers trilogy saw the light between 2013 and 2014, and Donna Thorland’s The Turncoat in 2013 as well; Edith Maxwell’s Called to Justice was published in 2017, and Suzanne Fisher’s Nantucket Legacy trilogy appeared in 2018, the last one to be published so far.
It is likewise worth considering which publishing houses have invested in these historical romances with Quaker protagonists. Most of them have an unequivocal Christian agenda,5 including Barbour, Harvest House, Revell and Shiloh Run Press, all of which are Evangelical publishers. They are responsible for publishing the works of the two four-in-one collections mentioned above, which were published by Barbour, as well as the romances of Mary Ellis (Harvest), Suzanne Woods Fisher (Revell), and Anna Schmidt (Shiloh Run Press). Quaker author Sue McCracken, for her part, had her romances published by Friends United Press, a Quaker publishing house. Unlike these publishing houses, others, like Camel Press (responsible for the publication of Carla Kelly’s romance), Walker Books (where Ann Turnbull’s romances appeared), or Five Star Publishing (in charge of Joanne Sundell’s romances) have no obvious connections with any particular faith. Yet other romances, particularly those published by Lyn Cote, have seen the light thanks to the Christian imprints of HarperCollins: Steeple Hill Books and Love Inspired Books (like the Wilderness Brides trilogy and the Gabriel Sisters trilogy). So, all in all, it is undeniable that historical romances with Quaker protagonists are mainly the object of interest of publishing houses with a clearly religious orientation, while the non-religious publishing houses which have published Quaker romances remain marginal within the market.
The authors’ backgrounds, too, show some diversity that is worth taking into account. Considering both the publishing house and the author’s backgrounds, it becomes possible to distinguish three groups of Quaker romances: first, Quaker romances properly speaking in so far as they have been written by Quaker authors (a total of six novels are found in this category); second, Evangelical romances with Quaker protagonists (there are twenty-three romances in this group); third, secular romances with Quaker protagonists (of which there are ten romances). Though this distinction will not be sustained in the structure of this book’s chapters, mostly based on thematic issues (history, gender, race and the twentieth-century world wars), it is one that is nonetheless worth bearing in mind, as it determines fundamental aspects of the novels under analysis, such as characterization, accuracy in the depiction of Quakerism, plot development or degree of deviation from the features of Christian romances generally agreed upon by romance scholars.
The first group, which comprises six romances, includes the works of Quaker writers Janet Whitney, Susan McCracken and Edith Maxwell. Janet Payne Whitney (1894-1974) was an English Quaker author. She moved to America in 1917 when she married George Gillett Whitney, who became Director of Fine Arts at Westtown Quaker School in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Janet Whitney taught Quakerism at the school and wrote several biographies of notable historical figures (such as Elizabeth Fry, John Woolman and Abigail Adams, among others), as well as five novels, of which Judith (1944), set in post-revolutionary Philadelphia, amply meets the requisites to be included in this book. Susan McCracken is a retired Quaker pastor at West Branch Friends Church in Iowa, part of Iowa Yearly Meeting (a group of Evangelical Friends churches in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota), whose romances, the Friends series, published by Friends United Press, a Quaker publishing house, came out in 1994, 1995, 1997 and 2001. For her part, Edith Maxwell is a member of a more liberal group, the Amesbury Quaker Meeting (which is part of the New England Yearly Meeting); she has authored a series of so-called “cozy” mysteries, the Quaker Midwife Mysteries, the first of which, Called to Justice (2017), features the investigation of a crime and a romance between the protagonist, a Quaker midwife and sleuth, and a young doctor.
Though these three authors are Quakers, they belong to different Quaker traditions: Janet Whitney was raised in the British one, while Susan McCracken and Edith Maxwell are American Friends. They, too, in turn are Quakers of various persuasions, as the former is closer to Evangelicalism, while the latter is a member of a more liberal Meeting. These distinctions make their being grouped together somehow incoherent, as, in truth, their portrayal of Quakerism differs a great deal. Nonetheless, their unique vision and knowledge of the Society of Friends as insiders, unlike the rest of the authors, all of whom are outsiders, recommends that their specificity be considered. As will be seen, their depiction of the heroine’s plain dress, to give an example, in not drawn by the desire to exoticize the female protagonist, nor is their portrayal of the rituals, beliefs and customs of eighteenthand nineteenth-century Quakers so conspicuously marred by anachronisms or misrepresentations as is the case of other non-Quaker writers. Still, Susan McCracken’s novels are characterized by a strong didactic goal—one could even call it an evangelical zeal—that is more informative in the case of Maxwell’s novel, and nearly anecdotal in that of Whitney’s. Consequently, generalizations should be out of the question because each of these Quaker authors has their own objectives when it comes to imagining Quaker brides in a historical context.
The second group of romances I have identified is comprised by twenty-three novels published by Evangelical publishing houses or the Christian imprint of a publishing house. They are far more numerous, which raises a question about why Evangelical authors would wish to appropriate Quakerism and Quaker characters. Among this group one can find Mary Ellis’s The Quaker and the Rebel (2014) and Susanne Woods Fisher’s the Nantucket Legacy trilogy (2018), published by Harvest House Publishers and Revell, respectively. Barbour, another Evangelical publishing house, has published two four-in-one collections: A Quaker Christmas (2011) and The Quakers of New Garden (2012), both of which contain novellas that meet the criteria used in this book (with one exception: the fourth novella in The Quakers of New Garden, “New Garden’s Conversion,” by Susette Williams, has been left out, as it is contemporary, not historical). Anna Schmidt’s The Peacemakers trilogy (2013-2014) has been published by Barbour and Shiloh Run Press. This group also includes some of Lyn Cote’s works. Of all the writers of Quaker romances, Cote is, by far, the most prolific. To date, she has authored three series: the Gabriel Sisters trilogy (2008, 2009 and 2010), the Wilderness Brides trilogy (the second book in the series, The Baby Bequest, has been left out, as there are no Quaker protagonists in it, so only the first book, that came out in 2012, and the third one, published in 2014, are considered), and the Quaker Brides tetralogy (2014-2016). The first two series appeared with Steeple Hill, one of the Christian imprints of HarperCollins, but the latter was published by Tyndale House Publishers, an Evangelical publishing house. As will be proved, this group of romances is more prone to adhere to the features that typically characterize Christian romances, as for instance a preference for “clean” stories, with no explicit sex scenes, and they also seem to show a tendency to dilute Quakerism or to assimilate it to Evangelicalism.
Finally, it is possible to distinguish a third group of romances that feature Quaker protagonists but cannot be considered, properly speaking, inspirational fiction, since they are not published by companies with an obvious religious goal. The group of secular romances includes ten works. Among them one may find novels like Suzanne Simmons Guntrum’s The Golden Raintree (Harlequin, 1990), Miranda Jarrett’s Spindrift (Harlequin Historicals, 1993); Carla Kelly’s Miss Whittier Makes a List (Camel Press, 1994); Eileen Charbonneau’s The Randolph Legacy (Forge, 1997); Catherine Archibald’s Loving Charity (Leisure Books, 2000); Sarah McCarty’s Tucker’s Claim (Spice Books, 2009); Joanne Sundell’s The Quaker and the Confederate books, which comprise two novels: Hearts Divided (Gale Cengage Learning, 2010a) and Hearts Persuaded (Gale Cengage Learning, 2010b); Ann Turnbull’s Seeking Eden (Walker Books, 2012c), and Donna Thorland’s The Turncoat (Penguin, 2013). Strictly speaking, the novels in this group fail to follow basic tenets of inspirational fiction, but I have nonetheless decided to include them in my analysis for comparative reasons and because, in some cases, the line that separates them from inspirational romances is not clear-cut.
Admittedly, Ann Turnbull’s romance shares some characteristics of inspirational romances. Quakerism, for example, plays an essential part in it, as does the beginning of the colony of Pennsylvania, conceived as a haven for British Quakers, and even the contribution of the Quakers from Germantown, Pennsylvania to the abolitionist movement; the novel also refrains from including premarital sex, though one might argue that rather than showing a concern with “clean” or sex-free romance, the author may be simply bearing in mind that hers is a book for young adults. Carla Kelly’s romance, for its part, features a Quaker protagonist. Her faith is, more often than not, irrelevant, merely a detail in her characterization that is intended to add some distinctiveness or exoticism to the character, but that happens to be the case in some Evangelical romances that feature Quaker heroines too. For their part, Joanne Sundell’s novels clearly depart from the Christian fiction requirement that romances show no explicit sexual scene (which, incidentally, is also the case in Loving Charity, Tucker’s Claim, Spindrift and The Turncoat). Indeed, Sundell’s novels go as far as presenting a hero and a heroine who have pre-marital sex, and a hero who divorces his first wife. Still, the weight of Quakerism in the characterization of the hero is such that I have decided to keep them both as part of the corpus. More strikingly, Eileen Charbonneau’s The Randolph Legacy, despite being a secular romance, partakes of a characteristic that is considered quintessential of the Christian romance: that of featuring a love triangle formed by the hero, the heroine and God, whose preeminence over the hero is unquestionable. In Charbonneau’s romance, indeed, Ethan Randolph, the novel’s atheist hero, doubts that he will ever gain the love of the heroine, the Quakeress Judith Mercer, because he is clearly at a disadvantage within the triangle: “Did he dare think a woman who spoke with God might love him forever?” (1997: 345). This, I argue, is definite proof that the distinction between Christian and secular romances with Quaker protagonists is not always obvious, which is the reason why I have decided to include both categories in my analysis.
Quaker Romances and National Identity
Considered as a whole, these thirty-nine romances offer a very interesting opportunity to test Laura Vivanco’s hypothesis that popular fiction is “a form of collective national therapy” (2016: 124). With this book, in particular, I intend to pinpoint the reasons why many U.S. romance readers feel attracted to these stories, and to unveil the specific goals that they might be trying to achieve as they immerse themselves in these historical romances; ultimately, my aim is to explore readers’ therapeutic use of Quaker romances, following Vivanco’s metaphor. In so doing, I will give special consideration to Hsu-Ming Teo’s conclusion that “focused enquiry into individual [romance] subgenres, authors, and texts yields important knowledge and understanding of women’s popular culture, as well as shedding light on a variety of other cultural phenomena such as national identity, […] [and] whiteness […], among many other themes and topics” (Teo 2018: 20; emphasis added).
With that in mind, this book will analyze how historical romances with Quaker protagonists contribute to a particular version of U.S. history and national identity, one which many readers find very appealing and, to some extent, therapeutic. The therapeutic power would come from the fact that the romances under analysis place special importance on several issues—four, in particular, as will be seen—that have a determining impact on the formation of a people’s national identity. As Ina Bergmann has explained, inherent to historical fiction is “the urge to create a national consciousness and a cultural identity” (2021: 15); for that urge to be satisfied, authors need to combine history with “[a] categorical triad of race, gender, and religion,” the three of which are “the foundational pillars” of historical novels (2021: 12). The need to forge a national consciousness and a cultural identity seems to have become even more acute in the twenty-first century, “[e]specially since the millennial hysteria gained momentum and the traumatic events of 9/11 unsettled […] the United States” (Bergmann 2021: 194). So, considering those circumstances, this book will analyze how Quaker romances—a majority of which, as said, have been published in the twenty-first century—deploy four elements, i.e., history, gender, religion, and race, and how these four elements contribute to the formation of a particular national identity.
Chapter one will specifically deal with how historical narratives can be used as a mirror for the present and a way of articulating contemporary anxieties and concerns, not only on a personal level, but also on a national one. It will also offer an overview of the main historical periods that the romances under analysis have chosen as their background, as well as the settings most often favored by their authors. All in all, it will show how these historical romances commodify history to sell a biased narrative of the nation’s origins. Chapter two will focus on the question of gender roles and the complicated balance the novels maintain between conservative and progressive ideas. Chapter three will concentrate on another commodification process, though this time of a religion, i.e., Quakerism, whose minority status and outer signifiers (mainly, plain speech and plain dress) favor processes of appropriation and exoticization. This section will explain the said processes, as well as the causes that draw writers and readers alike to Christian and secular romances with Quaker protagonists. Chapter four will deal with the issue of race relations, emphasizing the problematic representations of characters of minoritized races that prevail in the romances under analysis.
Finally, chapter five offers a case study of the only romances that take place in the twentieth century, namely, Suzanne Simmons Guntrum’s The Golden Raintree, which is set against the backdrop of the Great War, and Anna Schmidt’s The Peacemakers trilogy, which takes place during the Second World War. As in the romances that feature previous periods, in these novels, too, history, religion, gender roles and race relations play a vital role. However, they present Quaker heroines who are quite distinct from nineteenth-century Quakers in that they use neither plain dress nor plain speech and practically the only thing that sets them apart from other Christians is their out-and-out pacifism or, as Friends would put it, their Peace Testimony, especially remarkable during the two world wars. Most conspicuously, these twentieth-century romances, especially Anna Schmidt’s, offer a change in the minoritized Other, who is no longer an African American or a Native American, but is now a Jew. For these reasons, that is, the alterations they offer in the outer portrayal of Quakers, their shift in the ethnicity of the characters in the victim role, and their closeness in time to the present, they can be considered as an interesting corpus which deserves a separate and more in-depth study.
All in all, the analysis of these thirty-nine romances with Quaker protagonists will underscore the relevance of the four elements above given as being responsible for the novels’ success; namely, the novels’ self-aggrandizing deployment of U.S. history; their use of feminist principles in the configuration of gender roles; their appropriation of Quakerism, mostly of its outward and more exotic markers and of a few theological aspects; and their portrayal of race relations in such a way that White supremacy appears unchallenged. Indeed, as the analysis will demonstrate, the Quaker romances under study glorify America’s history either by minimizing its most problematic aspects or by exoticizing them, which accommodates the nationalistic feelings of their readers. The romances show a relative degree of flexibility when it comes to gender roles. This permits them to build the image of America as a country where women’s citizenship rights are respected, and democratic principles realized, and in this way, they manage to engage their female readership. Besides, the romances capitalize on those aspects of Quakerism that make this sect particularly appealing, especially its connection with the abolitionist cause and female suffrage. As they do so, they inscribe God’s leading role in the foundation of the nation, thus catering to the religious needs of their readership. Finally, the romances sanction unequal race relations where Whites are systematically the providers of aid and characters of color the recipients of Whites’ charitable efforts. This gives support to the status quo while, it would seem, simultaneously exonerating the White humanitarian elite from any accusations of racism. Ultimately, the analysis will prove that the appeal of the Quaker romances in the corpus resides in their capacity to build a national consciousness and a cultural identity for the U.S. in the twenty-first century; one which is based on the manipulation of history, gender, religion, and race for the greater good of White Christian nationalism.
1 The American Friends Service Committee, an inclusive Quaker organization whose mission consists in bringing about lasting peace, offers more information on Quaker Testimonies in their 2011 pamphlet “An Introduction to Quaker Testimonies,” available online.
2 For an in-depth study of Flowers from the Storm, see Selinger’s 2012 chapter “How to Read a Romance Novel (and Fall in Love with Popular Romance).”
3 These discarded novels with Quaker protagonists have been included in the Works Cited section under the labels “Fiction by Author” and “Fiction by Title.” Admittedly, none of those books is part of the analyzed corpus, but I chose to list all the works of fiction mentioned in this book, regardless of whether they have been studied or not. This, I think, will help other readers locate texts with Quaker protagonists which may not meet my criteria, but may meet someone else’s.
4 The corpus selected for this book may not be quite exhaustive. I have tried to find as many historical romances with Quaker protagonists as possible, but a few may have escaped me. I am immensely thankful to Laura Vivanco for helping me discover a few more historicals that met my criteria. Her generosity and genuine interest in contributing to my work are indeed commendable.
5 Proof of the evangelical mission that some publishing houses have is the statement that figures in the opening pages of romances published by both Barbour and Shiloh, as well as by other Evangelical publishing houses that are part of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association: “Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.”
