Evangelical and Progressive Inscriptions in Mary Antin's Autobiographical Discourse

Abstract

Abstract:This article discusses Mary Antin's autobiography The Promised Land as a cultural identity production of a performative, highly subjective author, in relation to contemporary American Protestant Evangelical and Progressive ideologies, as reflected by the text of the seven installments of the book printed in The Atlantic Monthly between October 1911 and April 1912 and by the book itself, reviewed and published in the fall of 1912. Previous scholarship engaged with the generic impact of Protestantism on Antin's work, without paying attention to the Evangelical influences. Although her Progressivism has been generally agreed on, it was only cursorily discussed, never explained, in relation to her memoir. This article argues that, based on a cultural close reading of Antin's life writing, of her related correspondence with Ellery Sedgwick, the editor of The Atlantic Monthly, as well as of later interviews and essays, the author's undenominational, possibly unacknowledged, Evangelicalism and declarative Progressivism originated in a peculiarly fervent, numinous assimilationism. The all-American narrating Mary constructed a version of her younger immigrating self that spurned the native Pale of Settlement social and economic mentality for the benefit of the mainstream perception of exceptionalism and success, in its turn-of-the century New England genteel version.