Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
Finding him to have a repulsive and jealous nature, Fanny Fern took the remarkable
step of leaving her husband, leading to a somewhat scandalous divorce in 1857,
and then turning to writing as a profession by which to earn her living.
Her writing focused on issues of immediate concern to herself as a woman, such
as domesticity, women ‘s rights, the double standard, and prostitution. Her searing,
logical, clear-eyed, and humorous satirical pieces won her a large readership, even
as her irony and mockery debunked gender stereotypes. Her children ‘s book Little
Ferns for Fanny ‘s Little Friends (1853) sold 100,000 copies. She followed this
success with the autobiographical novel Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present
Time (1854), a work criticizing the prevailing ideology of separate spheres that
relegated women to the private sphere. Through this criticism, she made a strong
case for women ‘s right to earn their living through work in the public sphere.
Fanny Fern exemplied the ability of women to earn their living and so gain
autonomy and comparative freedom. She became the highest paid columnist in
America with her Fanny Fern ‘s Column. She also wrote best-selling books and
bought herself a Manhattan brownstone, where she lived with her third husband,
James Parton, until she died of cancer in 1872.
4.19.1 “Male Criticism on Ladies’ Books”
(1857)
Courtship and marriage, servants and children, these are the great objects of a
woman ‘s thoughts, and they necessarily form the staple topics of their writings
and their conversation. We have no right to expect anything else in a woman ‘s
book.—N.Y. Times.
Is it in feminine novels only that courtship, marriage, servants, and children are
the staple? Is not this true of all novels?—of Dickens, of Thackeray, of Bulwer and
a host of others? Is it peculiar to feminine pens, most astute and liberal of critics?
Would a novel be a novel if it did not treat of courtship and marriage? and if it could
be so recognized, would it nd readers? When I see such a narrow, snarling criticism
as the above, I always say to myself, the writer is some unhappy man, who has come
up without the rening inuence of mother, or sister, or reputable female friends;
who has divided his migratory life between boarding-houses, restaurants, and the
outskirts of editorial sanctums; and who knows as much about reviewing a woman
‘s book, as I do about navigating a ship, or engineering an omnibus from the South
Ferry, through Broadway, to Union Park. I think I see him writing that paragraph
in a t of spleen—of male spleen—in his small boarding-house upper chamber, by
the cheerful light of a solitary candle, ickering alternately on cobwebbed walls,
dusty wash-stand, begrimed bowl and pitcher, refuse cigar stumps, boot-jacks, old
hats, buttonless coats, muddy trousers, and all the wretched accompaniments of
solitary, selsh male existence, not to speak of his own puckered, unkissable face;
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