Written in the 1840s andpublished here for the first time, Julia Ward Howe s novel about a hermaphrodite is unlike anything of its time or, in truth, of our own. Narrated by Laurence, who is raised and lives as a man and is loved by men and women alike, yet can respond to neither, this unconventional story explores the realization that fervent hearts must borrow the disguise of art, if they would win the right to express, in any outward form, the internal fire that consumes them. Laurence describes his repudiation by his family, his involvement with an attractive widow, his subsequent...