Fanny Fern Study Guide—Outgrowing the “Literary Domestic”

Biography

  • 1811 – Sara(h) Payson Willis is born to Nathaniel Willis, a newspaper editor and orthodox Calvinist, and Harriet Parker, an awesome lady.
  • 1828 – Attends Hartford Female Seminary owned by Catharine Beecher,
  • This school, although religious, does not adhere entirely to Calvinist orthodoxy, and so provides intellectual alternatives to other religious women’s schools of the time
  • 1837 – Marries Charles Eldredge and had three children, the oldest of whom died
  • 1846 – Charles dies of typhoid fever and leaves an enormous debt, plunging Willis into poverty
  • 1849 – Marries Samuel Farrington for economic security and not love; leaves him in 1851 and attempts to omit their marriage from her life history
  • June of 1851 – first article is published in The Olive Branch under the pseudonym Clara; she continues to write under assumed names leading up to Fanny Fern in September of that year
  • 1853 – Collection of columns titled Fern Leaves from Fanny’s Portfolio published to great acclaim
  • 1854 – After heavy publicity, semi-autobiographical novel Ruth Hall published, during which time Sara’s real identity is publicly revealed by an embittered newspaper editor.
  • 1856 – Sara Willis marries James Parton who introduces her to Walt Whitman later that year
  • 1856 – Fern reviews Leaves of Grass (the first, and for several years the only, woman to do so).
  • 1857 – Whitman refuses to pay back a loan from James and Fanny ends the friendship
  • Whitman’s subsequent slight: “One genuine woman is worth a dozen Fanny Ferns”
  • Dies of cancer in October of 1872—gravestone marked “Fanny Fern” and nothing else

Literary Personality and Legacy

  • Voice exhibits a pervasive blend of “sentimental” and satiric
  • As opposed to popular critical viewpoint that these two voices exist independent of each other, and that Fern essentially “outgrew” the sentimental in favor of satiric sharpness
  • Ruth Hall and newspaper columns actually illustrate the persuasiveness of “sentimentality’s” direct appeal to reader’s emotions
  • Until 1970s, prevailing view of Fern as a “tearful moralizer” (Walker 2) excludes her work from predominantly white, male “American canon”
  • In writing as in life, Fern fills multiple roles
  • Cultural historian Mary Kelley’s idea of the “literary domestic”
  • Identifies the quandary faced by women who, because of their writing, must respond to their new identities as “public figures” (a categorization usually reserved for men) (Walker 2)
  • Revelation of Fern/Willis’ identity after Ruth Hall makes the barrier between her “literary” and “domestic” selves far more permeable
  • Fern’s writing vis-à-vis Whitman’s
  • Fern’s review of LoG characterizes Whitman as a champion of women: “Walt Whitman, the effeminate world needed thee” (Fern 274)
  • Fern’s preface to Ruth Hall exhibits a Whitmanly intrusion on the privacy of individuals in order to describe them candidly: “I… have entered unceremoniously and unannounced, into people’s houses, without stopping to ring the bell”
  • Fern Leaves predates Whitman’s Leaves of Grass by two years—similarities in title, cover design and binding inspire some speculation about Whitman drawing from Fern’s work

Bibliography

Fern, Fanny. Ruth Hall & Other Writings. Ed. Joyce W. Warren. New Brunswick:

Rutgers University Press, 1986.

Selected newspaper columns from this volume:

  • “The Model Husband” (215)
  • “Mistaken Philanthropy” (227)
  • “Better Never to have Loved” (238)
  • “Mrs. Stowe’s Uncle Tom” (255)
  • “Tom Pax’s Conjugal Soliloquy” (268)
  • Review of Leaves of Grass (274)
  • “Fresh Leaves” (self-review, 290)
  • “A Reasonable Being” (317)

Walker, Nancy A. Fanny Fern. New York: Twayne, 1993.

Warren, Joyce W. Fanny Fern: An Independent Woman. New Brunswick: Rutgers

University Press, 1992.