Chapter 23 - Literary Fiction by New Orleans Women, 1961–2003

Summary

In the major literary writing by women in New Orleans in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the theme of home is a central preoccupation, and it is often figured in the literal houses the main female characters inhabit and the landscape that surround these houses. What these houses and landscapes mean varies for each of them, but all of them share an interest in the power of storytelling as a tool for taking ownership over a space and thereby achieving a certain autonomy – a sense of home – with regard to a world that would otherwise dominate them.