The Awakening of Helena Richie

TitleThe Awakening of Helena Richie
Year of Publication1906
Publication TypeNovel
Number of Pages or Episodes356 p.
LanguageEnglish
AuthorsDeland, Margaret
Tertiary AuthorsClark, Walter Appleton
PublisherHarper & Brothers
CityNew York
Keywordsaddiction; Black Americans; infidelity; marriage; ministers; Pennsylvania Railroad; physicians; Protestants; slavery; taxidermy
Abstract

A character study of Helena Richie—whose marriage is a failure and whose new lover is married and an alcoholic—who is caught in a double standard of morality for women.

Author Biography

Margaret Deland (1857-1945) was born Margaretta Wade Campbell to Allegheny City, Allegheny County clothing merchants. Her mother died after childbirth and her father died shortly thereafter, so Deland's mother's sister raised her in Manchester, then a borough in Allegheny County. Deland attended boarding school in New York and studied art at Cooper Union. She married Lorin Fuller Deland, Harvard's football coach. Maggie, as she was called, had a deep interest in women's issues and over the years she opened her home to over 60 unwed mothers and their babies. She was a friend to Willa Cather. For magazines, especially Harper's Weekly and The Atlantic Monthly, she published dozens of short stories, most based on her early years in Maple Grove and Manchester. She died in Boston. Walter Appleton Clark (1876-1906) studied at the Art Students League.

Time

1870s