LITR 4232: American Renaissance
University of Houston-Clear Lake
Student Presentation, spring 2001

Reader: Anonymous (red)

Recorder: Lacy Lakner

27 March 2001

Fanny Fern

I was honored to read material written by Sarah Payson Willis Parton, better known as Fanny Fern. I compared her strong identification with her pen-name to Mark Twain’s. She was the first American woman journalist and at the time (1850’s) she was paid $100 per article. Due to her enormous popularity and interest in the plight of women, the presentation is linked to objective #3 - subjects of American culture (a "popular" columnist) and representative problems such as equality, gender, and the emergence of the individual (Fern’s undaunted, assertive voice).

I began the presentation by passing around a photo of Fanny Fern and giving background facts about her life. Her father was the editor of two newspapers and her brother became a noted journalist and poet in the New York publishing industry. Fern was a rebellious young girl who wouldn’t conform to her father’s religious views, so he sent her to a variety of school’s hoping she would settle down and behave in the accepted "feminine" manner. (I meant to mention that Fern went to the Beecher seminary but forgot.) She never did completely conform.

Just before I read part of an essay (p. 2038) in which Fern satirizes the role of conformity for married women, I asked the class to keep in mind what Hawthorne said about her writing: "She writes as if she’s got the devil in her." Although her adult life headed in the direction that was expected of a woman in her times: marriage and children; tragedy took her eldest daughter and then her husband died too.

After the death of her loved ones and the failure of her second marriage, Fern struggled to become an independent woman who supported herself by writing for a living. Her father and father-in-law had been supporting her and did so in a very miserly fashion.

When Fern’s articles, which encouraged female bonding, gained popularity, she increasingly focused on the lack of women’s rights. I read another section of a Fern essay (p. 2045) where she wrote about the exploitation of working class girls.

Dr. White opened class discussion with comments about how Fern’s style matured "to the verge of a very serious writer" and he quoted another passage from page 2045. He also said Fern writes with a complex of emotions like Hawthorne, having sentimentality but intellectually complex. Cleo and

Joanne noted Fern’s "reporting" style of writing.

Sheila - read p. 2039 "Now the truth is just this, and I wish all the women on earth had but one ear in common, so that I could put this little bit of gospel into it." Asked if this was an example of "correspondence."

Cleo - added to this notion by relating the previous passage to Sojourner

Truth who used the gospel in her speeches to move, enlighten women.

Dr. White - turned his attention to sentimental romance referring to Fern’s first marriage in which the couple was happy, then husband dies, Fern ends up in poverty but wakes up to her situation, and later becomes a career writer, reclaims her life. Valerie - comments that Fern later in her life, was very aggressive in tackling issues of education, social reform, women’s rights, etc.

Dr. White - Fern’s in-laws forced a 2nd marriage that was a disaster, and her third marriage was to a younger man. Due to her success, Fern had a pre-nuptial agreement; she enters into the realm of representative, one step ahead of her time.

Valerie - adds that Fern’s second husband was jealous of her success; the focus of her essays were based on her life, which made her unpopular to some.

Dr. White - to sum everything up, he refers to p. 2037, on the information about Fern’s "Ruth Hall," a book about a widow gaining financial independence, when Fern was discovered as the author, her in-laws were upset over the personal satire, yet Hawthorne praised her.