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Nineteenth-century America was rife with Protestant-fueled
anti-Catholicism. Elizabeth Hayes Alvarez reveals how Protestants
nevertheless became surprisingly and deeply fascinated with the
Virgin Mary, even as her role as a devotional figure who united
Catholics grew. Documenting the vivid Marian imagery that suffused
popular visual and literary culture, Alvarez argues that Mary
became a potent, shared exemplar of Christian womanhood around
which Christians of all stripes rallied during an era filled with
anxiety about the emerging market economy and shifting gender
roles. From a range of diverse sources, including the writings of
Anna Jameson, Anna Dorsey, and Alexander Stewart Walsh and
magazines such as The Ladies' Repository and Harper's, Alvarez
demonstrates that Mary was represented as pure and powerful,
compassionate and transcendent, maternal and yet remote. Blending
romantic views of motherhood and female purity, the virgin mother's
image enamored Protestants as a paragon of the era's cult of true
womanhood, and even many Catholics could imagine the Queen of
Heaven as the Queen of the Home. Sometimes, Marian imagery
unexpectedly seemed to challenge domestic expectations of
womanhood. On a broader level, The Valiant Woman contributes to
understanding lived religion in America and the ways it borrows
across supposedly sharp theological divides.
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