Ellen Glasgow: A Women's Tradition.(Book review)

Ellen Glasgow: A Women's Tradition by Pamela Matthews. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995. 272 pp. $29.50.

PAMELA MATTHEWS'S ELLEN GLASGOW: A WOMAN'S TRADITION performs a valuable service in bringing the role that female friendship played in Glasgow's life and work to the foreground of Glasgow criticism. Matthews artfully connects Glasgow's previously neglected personal letters to women friends and colleagues with her fiction through They Stooped to Folly. The discussion of Anne Virginia Bennett's role in the author's life shows particular acuity, enlightening our understanding of this long-standing relationship. Matthews leaves the exact nature of this central relationship ambiguous, and that is most appropriate, given the time, place, and economic status of the two women. Because of these same social factors, Matthews could well consider the dynamics of the employer-employee relationship in their …