A whole range of American writers have focused on images of household, domestic virtue, and the feminine or feminized hero. This important new book examines the persistence and flexibility of such themes in the work of classic writers from Ann Bradstreet through Jefferson and Franklin to Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. Without minimizing the differences that divide these figures, Anderson shows the extent to which, in their various circumstances, they were all committed to a common enterprise--a social and cultural reconstruction based on the domestic values of the ideal private household.