The Three Women of The Damnation of Theron Ware or Illumination:

Alice-Celia-Sister Soulsby

By Harold Frederic

The purpose of this wiki is to venture on an in depth exploration into the lives of the three women in Frederic's The Damnation of Theron Ware or Illumination.  Alice, Celia, and Sister Soulsby are central figures that guide the novel and the main character, Theron Ware, to an illumination of the truth about women.  This wiki will tell about the differences between the three women, their descriptions, and what makes them who they are in the novel.  The wiki will also discuss their importance to the novel and why they made such an impact on the novel and Theron Ware.

Introduction

Although many believe that The Damnation of Theron Ware or Illumination is many solely about how Theron Ware fell from his faith, it is actually also (and just as importantly) about how the role of women was dramatically changing at the time.  Theron Ware's biggest struggle throughout the book seems to be understanding the changing role of the women characters.  Each main  female character embodied a different type of stereotyped woman; the religious, the house wife, and the sophisticated upper-class.  However, throughout the novel each of the females broke the stereotype that was previously laid out before them, and brought the tradional role of women into questioning.  Hence, The Damnation of Theron Ware or Illumination is indeed a novel that reaches into the dark corners of female struggles and thus illuminates the nature of women outside of the boxes that society had previously placed them in.  

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