Rebecca Rush's Kelroy and the Demise of Republican Idealism

Abstract

Abstract:In reaction to the nation's ever-increasing commercialization, the fiction of the time demonstrates a widespread fear that the Republic was in grave danger of losing its Revolutionary virtue: on the one hand, the ideal Republican citizen was to be enterprising, advancing the economy being essential to its welfare; on the other hand, that same citizen was to be unflinchingly willing to place society before self and family. For the supporters of Republican ideology, there was no contradiction, for that ideal society would balance the egoistic and the altruistic, the private and the public, because the public would always take precedence, even while the private would always work for the public good. But that virtue appeared more threatened than ever, such that novelists had to work harder to assure that virtue prevailed.