Download or read book The Story of Avis written by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most prolific and popular American writers of her time, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps is, nearly a century later, once more coming to be considered a major author. The Story of Avis, her most ambitious and successful novel, has long been out of print and will prove a revelation to modern readers. Avis is the story of a larger-than-life heroine, a promising artist, who against her better judgment is persuaded by her lover, Philip Ostrander--a "new man"--to marry. The failure of their modern marriage, and in due course of Avis's career, is inevitable. Phelps depicts the turmoil of her characters' inner lives with great sensitivity and with a skill that is striking. A feminist who clearly saw the constraints of traditional gender roles upon women and men, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was ahead of her own time in post-Civil War America. She remains highly readable today. "The Story of Avis (1877) will shock any reader who still thinks nineteenth-century American women's fiction is sentimental and pious. This novel is angry, not sentimental; iconoclastic, not pious; it concerns a talented and dedicated painter whose marriage destroys her genius."--Choice "This ornately articulate novel is playful; both kind and hopeful in its vision of the female conundrum. . . . I had intended to speed read it]. I ready every word."--Joyce Bright, Belles Lettres