The Mormon Novel : Virginia Sorensen's The Evening and the Morning
Lee, L. L.,Lewis, Merrill
Women, Women Writers, and the West
Troy, N.Y.
Whitston
1979
209-218
"When, in 1949, Sorensen published The Evening and the Morning, she made the definitive Mormon novel; that is, the novel can indeed be seen as the very type of social novel required by the Mormon community. Of course, the novel is more complex than that, i.e., it is not a mere photograph of a culture. It has its elements, necessary elements, of the romantic novel: the individual, a woman, in this case, is set against the community and must struggle for her own self--and will, in the end, win a kind of victory, an acceptance of life, in the name of love. But love is more than an expression of the individual self. It continues life, it continues lives, it continues the community. The victory is of the alone, lonely individual, but it is also an affirmation that human love is by neccessity social: 'There has been a woman and she loved a man and through this love men and loves were multiplied." [p.45]