PORTER, Rose

Born 6 December 1845, New York, New York; died 10 September 1906, New Haven, Connecticut

Daughter of David and Rose Hardy Porter

The author or editor of more than 70 books on religious themes, Rose Porter was descended from New England clergymen. Her father was a prosperous businessman and her mother an upper-class Englishwoman. Porter attended a New York City private school and spent time in England. After her parents' deaths, she became a semi-invalid and lived alone in New Haven.

Besides her 15 novels and her volumes of religious essays, Porter produced devotional exercises; anthologies of consolatory verse, such as Hope Songs (1885) and Comfort for the Mothers of Angels (1881); prayer books for the sick, such as In the Shadow of His Hand (1892); and collections of texts from literature and scripture arranged on calendars or diaries. Porter also edited selections from many poets.

Her first success was Summer Driftwood for the Winter Fire (1870). Presented as the diary of a nineteen-year-old girl, the book records a summer's travel, during which she falls in love and her lover dies. But most of the pages are occupied by the girl's meditations about Ruskin, heaven, her dead mother, and the beauties of nature. At the end, she is consoled in her single life because she has found work helping orphans.

Most of Porter's novels are similar: calm, retrospective, meditative, and told without suspense or emotional tension. Porter seldom created a villain or even a character with whom the hero or heroine might have serious conflict. When she did attempt novels with more plot, Porter used the conventions of sentimental melodrama.

In Foundations; or, Castles in the Air (1871), Alfred Merwin leaves his widowed mother in the country and goes off to be a city merchant's clerk. He falls into temptation—stays home from church, goes to "places of amusement" (unspecified), and gambles—and the farm is mortgaged to pay his debts. Ultimately, his mother's faith saves him; he prospers, gives to charity, returns to church, and marries his childhood sweetheart. The action is omitted; we do not see his debauchery or even his confession to his mother, but are told about both much later.

The masochistic elements of victory through suffering are most clearly visible in Uplands and Lowlands (1872). After an idealized relationship with his mother, orphaned Paul Foster goes to Rome and paints a magnificent holy picture. Because he will do no crass commercial work, he starves to death. His genius, of course, is recognized as soon as he has died.

The devotional books make Porter's basically conservative theology explicit. Her God is not human and domesticated but other and unfathomable. Porter emphasizes faith rather than works. Most importantly, she extols weakness and submission and suffering, which subdue the individual will and open the mind to God, and which are also particularly suitable for women. In Life's Everydayness (1893), Porter praises the daily annoyances and petty discouragements of the household because they enable one constantly to deny self and to exercise passivity and renunciation. Sympathy is woman's special vocation; many days may be well spent doing nothing but attending to the interests of others. Porter also finds it important to fight discontent; a woman should daily count her blessings and be happy with the people and circumstances around her.

Porter's writing gave theological support to a conception of woman as domestic, virtuous, passive, weak, devoted to the trivial, inculcating morality by example, enforcing obedience by suffering, and utterly unfit for any sphere beyond house walls. Reviewers praised Porter's novels for their purity; they were often included in series for young readers; and, to judge from the sheer number of titles, they must have had a fairly steady sale.

Other Works:

Selected works: The Winter Fire (1874). The Years That Are Told (1875). Christmas Evergreens (1876). A Song and a Sigh (1877). In the Mist (1879). Charity, Sweet Charity (1880). Our Saints: A Family Story (1881). The Story of a Flower (1883). Foregleams of Immortality (1884). Honoria; or, The Gospel of a Life (1885). A Modern Saint Christopher (1887). Driftings from Mid-Ocean (1889). Looking Toward Sunrise (1890). Open Windows, a Heart-to-Heart Diary (1890). Saint Martin's Summer; or, The Romance of the Cliff (1891). Women's Thoughts for Women: A Calendar (1891). My Son's Wife (1895). One of the Sweet Old Chapters (1896). The Pilgrim's Staff (1897). A Daughter of Israel (1899). The Everlasting Harmony (1900).