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Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow, 1873-1945
The Voice of the People
New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1900.





The Voice of the People (1900), Glasgow's first novel in her Virginia series, seeks to illustrate the class tensions erupting during the South's Reconstruction from 1867-1877. Specifically, Glasgow is interested in Virginia politics and the steady rise to power of the rural lower class. Opening in the fictional town of Kingsborough, Virginia (modeled after Williamsburg), the novel follows the struggle and ascension of Nicholas Burr, the son of a working-class farmer whose intellect and ambition eventually lead him to the governorship of Virginia. With the encouragement of Judge Bassett, a member of the upper class who is impressed by Burr's aspirations, Burr early on eschews the path accorded him by his inferior social position. Instead, he attends school at a young age and studies law in his spare time while helping his father and stepmother with their ailing farm. Later, as governor of Virginia, Burr is deemed "The Man with a Conscience" as he strives to represent Virginia without bowing to angling politicians or the wealthy, believing that he has the support of the masses. Yet in an ironic twist, Burr dies at the hands of the very people he represents as he unsuccessfully attempts to stop a lynch mob in Kingsborough.

The romantic idealism that propels Burr also fails him with his life's love, Eugenia Battle. The aristocratic Battles own land that borders on the Burr's, and Eugenia and Nicholas fall in love during their youth despite their disparate social stations. Although they privately pledged their love to each other, they part ways when Eugenia wrongly accuses Nicholas of seducing a lower-class woman. The true culprit is her brother, who refuses to admit his guilt. Nicholas swears never to forgive Eugenia's error in misjudging him. Though Nicholas goes on to achieve political greatness, he never recovers from forsaking her and leads a solitary life thereafter.

Glasgow's interest in the southern class system goes beyond Nicholas and Eugenia; she creates class representatives in each of her minor characters as well. While Judge Bassett represents the portion of the old aristocracy that has learned to look beyond class, General Battle refuses to acknowledge Nicholas Burr as anything but a farmer, and remains a bastion of the antebellum hierarchy. The widow Mrs. Dudley Webb clings to her aristocratic roots even as she struggles for a living, and she too scorns Nicholas's attempts to rise about his social station.

Though Voice of the People is fictional, it has several historically accurate elements. Glasgow prided herself on her research, and tailored Kingsborough closely to resemble Williamsburg. Her descriptions of Richmond's social and political scenes are based on her own experience, and the Democratic Convention that appears in the novel was modeled after one she attended in Roanoke in 1897. Glasgow would continue to address class conflict and women's postwar social roles in her successive novels about Virginia.


Works Consulted: Cooper, Frederic Taber, "Representative American Storytellers: Ellen Glasgow," The Bookman 29 (August 1909): 613-618, accessed 7 July 2004 <>; Francisco, Edward and Robert Vaughn and Linda Francisco, eds., The South in Perspective: An Anthology of Southern Literature , Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2001; Goodman, Susan, Introduction, The Battle-Ground by Ellen Glasgow, Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2000; Goodman, Susan, Ellen Glasgow: A Biography , Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998; Godshalk, William Leigh, Introduction, The Voice of the People by Ellen Glasgow, New Haven, CT: College & University Press, 1972; James, Edward T., ed., et al., Notable American Women, 1607-1950 , vol 3, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard, 1971; Martine, James J., Dictionary of Literary Biography: American Novelists, 1910-1945, vol 9, Detroit: Gale Research, 1981; Wagner (Wagner-Martin), Linda W., Ellen Glasgow: Beyond Convention, Austin: University of Texas, 1982.

Armistead Lemon

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