Evelyn Scott: the forgotten American modernist

From approximately 1920-1940. Evelyn Scott was hailed as one of the leaders of the American modernist movement for her work in poetry, drama, and fiction. Scott's work-consisting of eleven novels (two unpublished), two volumes of poetry, a volume of novellas, a biography, several plays, children's books, and numerous poems, short stories, and critical essays--remains some of the most innovative of the American modernists. Because the modernist period broached new subjects, many of these subjects were best written about by women whose creative works arose from the experiences which occurred in the private sphere-an area of intense investigation for subsequent feminist theorists. The objective of contemporary feminists has been to recover women's modernist experiences through works which represent this private sphere, and this study shows that Evelyn Scott's work is among the foremost of those which should be studied.

Evelyn Scott is best remembered as an experimental novelist whose work from the very beginning challenged conventional form. This study fully explores the modernist and cultural aspects of the three novels which compose Scott's trilogy {The Narrow House (1921), Narcissus (1922), and The Golden Door (1925)}. It is an examination of Scott's literary interpretation of the modern American woman. Further, this study examines how Scott's work expands upon the work of earlier novelists such as Wharton, Chopin, and Gather, and how her work contributes in terms of "newness" in theme, structure, and form to the American modernist period.