Gender and Genre in Reviews of the Theological Novel

Abstract

In this essay, Anne DeWitt focuses attention on the press reception of novels by Mrs Humphry Ward (1851–1920), whose writing career began at Macmillan’s Magazine (1859–1907) prior to her becoming one of the bestselling novelists of the 1880s. The gendering of the reception of Ward’s two theological novels, John Ward, Preacher (1887) and Robert Elsmere (1888), is bound up with broader concerns about women writers’ engagement with theology. As DeWitt explains, ‘Reviews of theological novels were a crucial site for the articulation of diverse and often opposed positions on the question of whether women could contribute to theology, and the related question of whether theological issues could be examined in fiction, especially fiction by women’ (p.443). Where some reviewers ‘stressed feminine inability to grapple with theology,’ others ‘often challenged female authors’ attempts to engage in theological debate’ (p. 445). Either way, the sheer volume of column inches devoted to the debate over Ward’s contribution to theological discourse accorded her work a ‘significant measure of intellectual respect’ and, ultimately, sales (p. 397).