Olympiana (1839)
AUTHOR: Stowe, Harriet Beecher
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951d003220206&view=1up&seq=261
KEYWORDS: gender, Grahamism
---. Woman’s Profession as Mother and Educator
Jackson, James Caleb. American Womanhood
SUMMARY (Aïcha Bouchelaghem, edited Deborah Madsen)
“Olympiana” is a short story that uses the classical Greek Gods as an allegory for Stowe’s view of ideal home management. The action takes place on Mount Olympus; Stowe imagines the household of Juno, Jupiter, and their children – Venus, Mercury, Apollo and the Muses, Minerva, the Graces, Venus, and Vulcan. “Olympiana” is metafictional: it proposes that these Olympian gods are patrons of The Lady's Book, and thereby reflects on the function of the magazine for its lady readers.
Stowe’s reference to Graham forms part of the thematic groundwork for her comparison of immortals to mortals, gods to humans, the story’s protagonists to the readers of The Lady’s Book. “Juno… sat in a corner with her knitting work, not much older than she looked some thousand years ago, when Homer made his bow to her; for gods and goddesses who, by most authentic accounts, have lived on the Graham system in all ages, keep their good looks in a manner that would astonish you” (241).