This work examines eight Virginia novels against the background of the political and social concerns of the Jacksonian years in which they were written, arguing that the authors used familial processes as a metaphor to discuss issues that they regarded as critical. Each chapter focuses on a single novel - Swallow Barn , Kentuckian in New York , Cavaliers of Virginia , Horse-Shoe Robinson , George Balcombe , The Partisan Leader , and Knights of the Horseshoe - and examines its connections to the social and political tensions of the time of its publication - general progress, sectional unity, executive authority, class relations, the nature of the ideal leader, relations among sections and states, socialist and perfectionist communities, and westward expansion. Read against this background, the Virginian novels of John Pendleton Kennedy, William Alexander Caruthers and Nathaniel Beverly Tucker can be shown to employ representations of courtship, marriage, parenthood and sibling relations to explore metaphorically some of the political tensions of the period, including the relationship among states, the relationship of the central government and the states, the structure and basis of community and the nature of the ideal leader.