Susan Laird’s research while affiliated with University of Maine and other places

... In My Heart and My Flesh, Roberts examines "the human being with all the advantages of education and culture" who at the same time lacks the sense of knowing where to find "morality," "order," and "significance" (Rovit 1960, 47). Theodosia embodies Roberts' vision of the inadequacy and even tragedy of the traditional ideal of education noted by Martin (1985) and Laird (1988Laird ( , 1991. In her notes on My Heart and My Flesh, Roberts expresses her view of Theodosia as "a wondering spirit, a lost thing" with only "partial consciousness" possessing ironically a "rich insufficiency" of life. 2 Roberts sees Theodosia's assets as precipitating a condition that needs to be taken down to the "bare breath" of life, and afterward built back up, which transforms the novel from "an agony of naturalistic despair" into a novel that "leads us from death into life" (Campbell and Foster,167). ...

Reference:

Ludwig Feuerbach versus Max Stirner: What a Few Old Germans can tell us about our Present Education System