Grace Alexander was born in Indianapolis, where she attended,
and later taught, school for a number of years. From 1891-1903
she was a music critic and editorial writer for the Indianapolis
News. In 1904 she became a reader for the Bobbs-Merrill Company.
She wrote two romantic novels during her lifetime: Prince Cinderella,
set in New England, and Judith:
A Story of the Candle-Lit Fifties.
Judith is set in the fictitious Indiana village of Camden, located
on the Ohio River. Corydon, located in southern Indiana, is
the town Alexander based her book off of, a town she had visited
several times.
In the novel set in the 1850s, Alexander sets
up a love
triangle. A young woman comes back from traveling to find
the man she is to wed very ill. The fact that he is sick is bittersweet
as she does not want to marry him, yet does not want him
to
die.
To complicate matters, a new preacher from New England
comes to
town, and the young woman falls in love with him. The complexities
of love are intertwined with descriptions of Indiana.
Alexander writes with an admiration for the countryside.
In the beginning of Judith, one of the main characters
steps off
the
train that brings him from his hometown in New England.
Alexander chose
to use this opportunity to describe the Indiana landscape
from the newcomer’s perspective:
Fresh from
the bleak landscapes of New England, he thought
that he had never seen anything
so beautiful. In the whole
picture
was wealth and vividness
of color….
Clambering up the riverbank on
the right were the
wide, slow streets
of a little
old half-southern
town, peaceful, bowery.
East, west, and north of the town
purple hills, gently
rising from yellow, kingly cornfields,
from swelling upland pastures
and from thick orchards,
shut out the world and its confusion
(2).
The differences between the New England landscape and Indiana
are rooted in society. New England was well established
from years
of humankind molding the land. The early settlers of
America resided in New England, tearing
out the trees and
setting up
villages,
towns, and later, cities. Indiana was going through those
stages in the 1850s. The environment of Indiana was going
through
changes due to the increasing amount of people calling
it home. At this
time in history, however, Indiana still kept some of
its original natural beauty.
Later in the novel, Alexander gives a detailed description
of what people planted in their gardens in the 1850s:
…
tall, tangled flower-gardens, with their vivid masses of
bloom, their stately procession through the seasons of
fragrant eglantine,
blushing peonies, tawny lilies, spotted flags and flaunting
hollyhocks, and their humble neighbors: clove pinks, marigolds
and love-in-the-mist.
From these gardens the girl had once plucked many a nosegay… (13).
Eglantines (Rosa eglanteria) are small bushy roses.
Today, they are rare, and hard to find in gardens or flower
shops. Love-in-the-mist
(Nigella damascena) is no longer found in Indiana.
Even plants cannot escape the clutches of society.
Many ships could be seen cruising up and down the Ohio River,
where the farming community of Camden was situated:
…
he saw a cow chewing her cud and swishing her tail in a
serene saunter: a high billowy load of hay grudging the
driver his seat
and drawn at a snail’s pace by stout mules;
an ancient carryall; and beyond, on the river,
steamboats and packets
on their way to
and form the larger ports of Cincinnati and Louisville
(38).
In the 1850s, and today, Indiana is mainly an agricultural state, and to see cows chewing cud and hay transported
is no rare site.
Other things that were not out of the ordinary to
see in Indiana are included in the next passage:
Winding past low, white farm-houses quite overshadowed
by great red barns and past sentineled corn-fields strewn
with golden
pumpkins, [the wagon] climbed long, gradual, beech-brown
slopes to upland
meadows, across which flocks of sheep, like gray, drifting
clouds, grazed on succulent herbs spared by the frost;
steadily on and
up it led into a remote, hill bound solitude (40).
Although scenes like this are common in the 1850s
and today, some differences exist. In the 1850s, Indiana still
was
spread out, as far as humanity was concerned.
Miles and miles separated villages, and even farmhouses, while in today’s
society farms and cities are butting heads more and more. Farmland
is being sold
off to make way for shopping complexes, churches, and
housing
complexes. In the present
day, the big
red barn is elusive, and the conventional white farmhouse is replaced
by modern accommodations.
Throughout the novel Alexander sprinkles in tidbits about the landscape
of Indiana. Each time she describes the beauty she has witnessed first
hand,
the reader can
tell that she has an admiration for what surrounds her.
--CJN
Sources:
Alexander, Grace. Judith: a Story of
the Candle-lit Fifties. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co.,
1906.
---. Prince Cinderella. Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1921.
Banta,
RE. Indiana Authors and Their Books.
Crawfordsville, IN: Wabash College
UP, 1949.
Vanausdall,
Jeanette. Pride and Protest: The
Novel in Indiana. Indianapolis: Indiana
Historical
Society, 1999.
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