A New Home, Who'll Follow?

by Caroline Kirkland

Set in the frontier of Michigan int he 1830s, A New Home is the first realistic portrayal of western village life in the United States. Based on Caroline Kirkland's own experiences - and written from a woman's perspective - it narrates with a keen eye and wit the absorbing story of the establishment of the village of Montacute, Michigan.

A New Home is a vivid contribution to a new kind of narrative developed during the antebellum period, ethnographic fiction. Kirkland highlights the importance and the drama of local practices and everyday life in Montacute. She traces the way two groups of settlers slowly adjust to each other - the old hands and the newcomers from the East;. Dramatizing differences of class and culture, she also shows how the groups finally form a genuine community and a new, diverse culture. Kirkland also gives ethnographic fiction an original she satirizes the provincialism and the rigidity of both groups of settlers.

After writing A New Home , Kirkland became a professional literary woman, working as an editor as well as a writer. In her introduction, Sandra Zagarell explores the implications of Kirkland's writing and professional career for our understanding of women, writing, and the world of literature in antebellum America.

Genres: Nonfiction, Classics, 19th Century, Memoir

218 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1839

About the author

Caroline Mathilda Stansbury Kirkland (January 11, 1801 – April 6, 1864) was an American writer.

On returning to New York, Mrs. Kirkland opened a school for girls and from 1847 to 1849 was editor of the Union Magazine. She also entered into the literary social life of the community often entertaining writers, publishers, and other notables. Her home served as a literary salon and hosted notables including Edgar Allan Poe, William Cullen Bryant, Elizabeth Drew Stoddard, and others. Mrs. Kirkland went abroad in 1848 and again in 1850. She was received by Charles Dickens and the Brownings, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. She also became a close friend and correspondent of Harriet Martineau.

Kirkland had considerable fame and accolades from her writings during her lifetime. Poe in particular thought of her as a significant American writer. She was a relatively early American woman writer who appears to have written because she liked to write and only published what she considered to be well written. She wrote for men as well as women but definitely wrote from a female perspective. Her works continue to be studied in relation to style, contributions to American literature and the influence of the female perspective.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Sigrid A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Caroline Kirkland's 1839 novel is a lightly fictionalized account of her early years as a settler in Pinckney, MI. It's fascinating as a historical document - she and her family have moved to Michigan after buying a parcel of land from an agent on the promise that the fictional town of Montacute will grow and prosper after their arrival. The narrative is more episodic than plot-driven, and Kirkland depicts Michigan's residents through individual anecdotes that are presented as examples of larger characteristics in the region. Kirkland has a satirical eye, and her neighbors were apparently not flattered by her account of them as as rustic, narrow-minded, and provincial. I very much enjoyed Kirkland's sharply observant and satirical narrative voice, and it was interesting to read about the early history of the region around Detroit.

[Bucket · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charming at its best and tedious at its worst. This might be more interesting to me than it would be to others since I grew up in Michigan and am familiar with the Pinckney area (the "Montacute" of the story). But Kirkland does have a light-hearted voice, describing her experiences with some well-placed self-deprecation and hindsight. She pokes fun at the characters she meets, mostly lovingly.

Some quotations:

"I have sometimes thought that our neighbors forget that 'the days of man's life are three score years and ten,' since they spend all their lives in getting ready to begin."

"Those who consider Religion a gloom and a burden, have only to reside for a while where Religion is habitually forgotten or wilfully set aside. They will soon learn at least to appreciate the practical value of the injunction, 'Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together.'"

(This second quote struck me as it's a frequent topic in the past few decades too -- the aloneness of modern life and the lack of structured community meet-ups that things like religion do so well.)

[Marti (Letstalkaboutbooksbaybee) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for class

I understand that this lady was bored out of her mind out on the prairie, but I did not enjoy her satirical voice or the fact that she just made fun of her neighbors the whole time. She wrote as if she were better than everyone else, but she was out there with them doing the same hard life.

kudos to her for being a frontrunner in women authors though and paving the way, even if I didn't like her book.

[Humphrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like the best satire, Kirkland's cuts three ways: against the ostensible subject (the odd Michigan pioneer society), the critics (the populous eastern seaboard), and herself (the eastern transplant to Michigan who finds herself possessing both knowledge and ignorance of each). Informative, funny, and well constructed: this is much more than a footnote for historicists.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this because it intersects with a couple of my current interests (lesser-known early American authors, especially women, and the experiences of those who settled the west, especially during the period that "the west" was what we now call the midwest). Therefore, it kept coming up in other works, including Virgin Lands and A Jury of Her Peers, among those listed here.

The book itself was written in the 1830s and is basically the experiences of a fictional narrator from the East (based on the author) in a town in Michigan (the town she and her husband actually founded in 1837, though it and the characters are portrayed here under a fictional name, which people soon saw through, causing much fuss and offense). There's not really much of a story, but if you are interested in the topic at all (or the development of American writing), it is interesting for those reasons and was always enjoyable to pick up and read for a little while at a time, though never super-engrossing.

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

After moving from New York to Michigan in the 1830s, Kirkland originally wrote this series of sketches as letters to her friends back east, satirizing her new (and, in her view, very uncouth) neighbors. Yes, sometimes she comes across as snobby, but mostly she's just wonderfully witty, and it's amazing how many of her commentaries still ring true about our modern society. As an added endorsement, Edgar Allan Poe thought Kirkland was a national treasure, and Poe didn't like anybody.

(Note: My two grad classes this semester are about American frontier writing and about Restoration and 18th-century British lit...in case you're wondering about my strange and sudden shift in reading material!)

[Jason Rains · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll be honest, this was a bit of a slog. Most of the books consists of very loosely connected anecdotes, and it can get hard to keep track of some of the characters. Still interesting for its historical significance to American literature, but I wouldn't have stuck it out till the end if it hadn't been for a class.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rather boring, but good writing anyway.

[Bonsai]

Enjoyed this initially, and then my attention span for backwoods gossip petered out. Once they get settled, it's basically a collection of anecdotes about the neighbors.

[Caroline Simpson · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the essential accounts of the early westward movement into places like Michigan and Illinois.

[Allyson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Much better than Emerson and Thoreau.

[Alice Gold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Caroline Kirkland is Laura Ingalls Wilder meets Erma Bombeck. She is so smart and witty and tells a great migration tale. Love this book.

[Avis Black · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kirkland's observations are mildly interesting, but not terribly interesting, and her awkward writing style has all of the excesses of the period.

[Karen Humeniuk]

Yes, this book is quaint, but it's also powerful - given when, where, and why Mrs. Clavers wrote it. It's a must read for any woman who seeks to be empowered by her own experiences, wisdom and insight into the world in which she lives.