St. Elmo (original 1896; edition 2009)

It may be worth comparing this extremely successful novel published in 1867 (but largely forgotten today) with the disastrously unsuccessful Pierre, or the Ambiguities which basically destroyed Herman Melville's career as a writer - but is still in print and widely read. Both books have repeated reference to Shakespeare and the Bible, both have a writer as a principal character who travels to New York in an attempt to succeed in the highly competitive literary environment there. Edna Earl, Evans' heroine, is a Tennessean orphan rescued from a train wreck by a wealthy widow in Georgia who has a cynical, world-weary but well-informed and handsome son, St. Elmo Murray. Edna is beautiful, industrious, amiable, pious and talented - she turns down no less than four marriage proposals before St. Elmo finally wins her hand by repenting and becoming a Christian minister. Melville's Pierre seems to be less of a character which antebellum novel readers could identify with. He's a Yankee, not so very talented but very idealistic - so much so that he feels a religious commitment to rescue his newly discovered half-sister Isabel from workhouse bondage by eloping to New York with her - unfortunately alienating his wealthy mother (but not his ex-fiancee, Lucy Tartan, who joins him and Isabel in a menage a trois in Manhatten!) Pierre is a tragedy which explores the sins of a father being visited on the subsequent generation. St. Elmo is a romance filled with zeal to proselyte for Christianity - a Christianity that denies any validity in the movements toward racial and sexual equality and regards John C. Calhoun as a statesman on a par with George Washington.
Pierre, like other tragedies, poses difficult questions about life, love, idealism and Providence which have retained their resonance well into this new century. St. Elmo is a facile period piece - revealing much about the Reconstruction Era's literary tastes and displaying a good deal of Classical erudition, appreciation and knowledge of flora and fauna, fashion, and then existing medical lore. It attempts to move its readers by presenting a near perfect heroine who, in the end, even learns to 'Judge not that ye be not judged' and is united with the man of her dreams - who's soul her righteousness has helped redeem.
Pierre, on the other hand, is hardly sure what righteousness is - only that whatever it is this world will give it rough treatment. ( )