"The Corporeity of Heaven": Rehabilitating the Civil War Body in The Gates Ajar

Long argues that S. Weir Mitchell's "The Gates Ajar" offers sentimental consolation as well as a rigorous exploration of the ontological systems unraveling during the Civil War and its aftermath. Mitchell is one of the first American writers and thinkers who found in the Civil War a trope capable of expressing both the personal transformations and social revolutions of their changing culture.