Katharine Fullerton Gerould
Katharine Fullerton Gerould was an American author born on February 6, 1879, in Brockton, Massachusetts. After being adopted by her uncle and aunt, she pursued her education at Radcliffe College, earning her B.A. in 1900 and M.A. in 1901. Gerould began her academic career in the English Department at Bryn Mawr College, where she taught for a decade. Her personal life included a brief engagement with a cousin and a stable marriage to Gordon Hall Gerould, a medievalist from Princeton. Although she initially struggled to find her voice as a writer, her first collection of short stories, *Vain Oblations*, published in 1914 with the support of prominent novelist Edith Wharton, marked the start of a prolific career. Gerould's works often delve into the complexities of familial relationships, portraying themes of emotional struggle and sacrifice. Despite her contributions to literature, she remains lesser-known compared to her contemporaries like Hemingway and Faulkner, though her stories continue to be relevant in discussions of moral dilemmas and psychological depth in character development. Gerould passed away from lung cancer on July 27, 1944, in Princeton, New Jersey.
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Subject Terms
Katharine Fullerton Gerould
Writer
- Born: February 6, 1879
- Birthplace: Brockton, Massachusetts
- Died: July 27, 1944
- Place of death: Princeton, New Jersey
Biography
Katharine Fullerton Gerould was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, on February 6, 1879. Adopted by an uncle and aunt, she attended private school and then matriculated at Radcliffe College, graduating in 1900 with B.A. and with her M.A. in the following year. She immediately accepted a position in the English Department at Bryn Mawr College outside Philadephia, where she would remain for ten years. When she learned in 1903 that she was adopted, she found herself dealing with confusing feelings toward her cousin, whom she had long regarded as her brother. They became engaged briefly until he began to pursue the novelist Edith Wharton and ultimately broke off the engagement. In 1910, Fullerton married a distinguished international medievalist from Princeton University, Gordon Hall Gerould, a marriage that would prove to be stable and lasting.
Although she had found modest success writing short stories in college, Gerould did not publish her first collection until 1914; when she did, it was, ironically, with Wharton’s help. Vain Oblations began what would prove to be a steady series of short-story collections, novels, and collections of essays that would continue until the late 1930’s. Although defining a consistent theme across such a prolific career is difficult, Gerould most prominently explored the dynamics of relationships, particularly those distressing familial ties that inevitably involve sacrifice and emotional struggle.
Like Henry James a generation earlier, Gerould constructed tightly plotted tales that probe the psychology behind the behavior of characters bound within difficult relationships. They are most often tales of domestic unease and simmering frustrations. Mothers struggle to love distant children, wives quietly sacrifice to remain within loveless marriages, husbands cavalierly abandon dependent families. Often cited as one of Gerould’s strongest pieces, Vain Oblations is typical: A beautiful New England woman, the daughter of a missionary on assignment in Africa, is kidnapped by a local tribe. When she is finally rescued from her captors, she has been decidedly transformed by her harrowing experience. Unable to accept offering her fiancée her ruined self and desperate to free her soul from its compromised casing, she commits suicide, a noble gesture of sacrifice that is a measure of the strength of her character.
In addition to her numerous story collections, Gerould published several novels, most notably A Change of Air (1917), a Whartonesque morality tale in which an ensemble of indigents inherits a massive sum of money. Her 1920 collection of essays, Modes and Morals, full of bon mots about appropriate living and moral choices that reflected her conservative temperament, was a surprise best-seller. After a long struggle with lung cancer, she died in Princeton, New Jersey, on July 27, 1944.
Although prolific, Gerould never secured sustained critical reputation. Her strong narrative sensibility, her often elaborate prose line, her manifest faith in psychological accountability, and her sense of clear-cut moral issues would leave her outside the mainstream expression of American literature—the postwar generation of Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner— that would emerge during the 1920’s. As examples of the Jamesian tradition of delineating characters caught up in moral dilemmas, however, her stories certainly sustain contemporary scrutiny.