A sturdy rose: Spiritual feminism---a literary legacy of women of the United States, 16th through 20th centuries

A representative sample of U.S. women writers from the 16th through 20th centuries is analyzed in order to highlight the spiritual themes of their work: Anne Bradstreet, Suzanna Rowson, Hannah Griffiths, Susanna Wright, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Sarah Orne Jewett, Susan Glaspell, Kate Chopin, E. C. Stanton, Eliza Snow, a group I have labeled the "island writers," Laurie King, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Walker, and Julia Butterfly Hill. I identify a generally ignored, spiritual legacy of women in the U.S. literary tradition, beginning with the dilemmas laid bare by the record of Anne Hutchinson's teachings. Considered chronologically, these works trace the emergence of a feminist spiritual consciousness.;My examination shows this literary record's deep roots in Protestantism's strengths, especially its emphasis on literacy, personal development, and community involvement, as well as in its consistent show of resistance to Protestantism's various weaknesses, especially those associated with patriarchal religious and social structures. While this spiritual strand of women's discourse is fostered by Protestant values of literacy and personal responsibility and trust in one's one inner voice and consciousness, it also encompasses other ideas: a valuing of solitude, a desire for direct connection to the divine, a strong relationship with the natural world (suggesting a pre-Christian European consciousness), and a strong advocacy for solidarity with other women.;This dissertation also sets forth an example for understanding women's spiritual and religious expression in key literary works, so as to render these works more "teachable" for professors of spirituality and religion, literature, women's studies, and cultural history in multicultural environments. It also shows that some of the roots that led to the blossoming of the Women's Spirituality movement in the 1970s were present in the resistance of English-American women writers from the beginning of the colonial project, as they chafed at patriarchal religious and secular authority and posited alternative spiritual constructs.