Introduction: History and the heroines of fiction -- pt. 1. A native literary tradition: Harriet Beecher Stowe and Nathaniel Hawthorne: Renunciation in New England: Harriet Beecher Stowe and The minister's wooing -- Self-culture: Margaret Fuller and Hawthorne's heroines -- pt. 2. The New England girls of William Dean Howells and Henry James: The Howells heroine: from The lady of the Aroostook to April hopes -- Henry James and the New England consciousness: Roderick Hudson, The Europeans, Hawthorne -- The tragedy of self-culture: The portrait of a lady -- New England in extremis: The Bostonians.