St. Elmo — Context and Discussion

Mountain Dawn and Biblical Voice

The first excerpt opens with a girl singing Habakkuk to a 'wild, anomalous tune' as she stands before Lookout Mountain, described as a 'stern cowled monk of the Cumberland brotherhood.' The landscape is personified and sacralized: nature lays 'her broad finger over her great lips' in reverent silence before the sun. The child's face is compared to a 'Syriac priestess' or 'Baalbec's vestal,' linking her to ancient temple worship. This is not a generic pastoral; it is a specific, heightened setting where the natural world and biblical text fuse. The 'holy hush of early morning' and the 'fiery and blinding radiance' of dawn create a sensory contrast between stillness and blaze, humility and exultation. Evans uses the mountains as both backdrop and moral emblem—the 'everlasting mountains' of the prophet's verse become a physical presence that dwarfs the human figure yet echoes her song.

The Pastor's Warning and the Literary Woman's Burden

In a later excerpt, the pastor Mr. Hammond delivers a lengthy admonition to Edna, warning that literary ambition 'consumes the women in whose hearts it burns.' He enumerates the costs: envy from her own sex, ridicule from men, and the fate of being 'a target for envy and malice, and, possibly, for slander.' His language is stark—'millstones,' 'thorns,' 'sapped foundations,' 'early grave.' He contrasts the 'wash-tub' and 'dairy' with the 'Olympian game of literature,' implying that domestic labor is sweeter than public acclaim. Edna replies not with defiance but with humility, resting her head on his knee and invoking St. Radegund. The exchange is a formal debate on vocation, framed by religious duty: Edna argues that her talent is a trust from God, while Hammond insists that 'the days of miraculous inspiration are ended.' The scene ends with his blessing, but the tension remains unresolved.

Ambition, Faith, and the Parable of Talents

Edna's rebuttal to Hammond hinges on the Parable of the Talents: 'Because He gave you five talents and to me only one, do you think that in the great day of reckoning mine will not be required of me?' She does not claim equality with De Staël or Brontë, but insists on accountability for her gift. The pastor's response—'the peace of God, which passeth all understanding'—is both a blessing and a deferral. The haymakers' shouts and children's laughter outside the study window underscore the domestic world Edna is urged to prefer. The excerpts do not reveal whether she ultimately publishes or fails, but they establish a central conflict: the pursuit of literary fame versus the ideal of humble, private service. Evans embeds this debate in a religious framework, using biblical allusion and clerical authority to weigh the costs of a woman's public voice.

Readers will find that the excerpts offer only fragments of a long novel—nearly 183,000 words—and that the debate between Edna and Mr. Hammond may recur or evolve. Pay attention to how the mountain imagery and biblical language return in later scenes, and whether the novel resolves the tension between sacred calling and worldly ambition or leaves it suspended. The catalog subjects—war story, domestic fiction, Alabama history—suggest that the Civil War and home front will enter the narrative, though they are absent from these pages.

That girl chanting Habakkuk at dawn always stayed with me—her fierce, lonesome certainty. It makes me think of how we change, and what we lose of that first fervor. Reading old humor collections like Sketches New and Old, Part 1. — Reading Notes brings back a similar ache, a gentler time when wonder felt simpler, less bruised by the world’s thorns.