“What local issues were fictionalized, were considered significant enough to warrant the attention of the novelist and the reader?” (Davidson 68)
Davidson argues that early novels “provided the citizens of the time...with literary versions of emerging definitions of America” (Davidson 67). Williams’ opinion often shows through her means of narration in Fall River, from the very beginning of the book in which she refers to Cornell as the “unfortunate heroine of the tale” (Williams 6). Wiliams describes in multiple instances the “recklessness displayed by the prisoner’s friends of the character and peace of individuals”; she is not shy in suggesting that there is an unfairness in the way the trial was handled, and the testimony that was accepted (55). Throughout the book, this narration implies a criticism of the religious communities in America at the time, and how loyalty to those communities negatively impacted Avery’s trial. Williams’ narration, in other words, is the lens through which she constructs her “vision of a developing new nation,” including the issues which plague it (Davidson 68).
Image citation: Mazzola, Francesco. Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. 1523, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.