Essay on The Values, Ideals, and Actions of Fanny Fern

Criticising others takes a great deal of courage, especially when this criticism could reflect upon one’s own work. However, in the introduction of her speech to the Women’s National Press Club, Clare Booth Luce utilizes changes in tone, humor, while appealing to ethos, and pathos to prepare her audience for the impending criticism.

In the 21st century, many women, myself included, take for granted that we can wear whatever we desire and say what we want, in public, without the fear of being thrown in jail. However, that was not always the case. While the fight for the continued advance of women’s rights rages on, women of the 19th century lived a very different life than the one, us women, lead today. The feminist agenda was just emerging on the horizon. One particular woman was preparing to do her part to further the cause of women’s rights: Sarah Willis Parker. Parker was better known by her pen name, Fanny Fern. After facing and overcoming extreme adversity, she made the decision to start writing. To understand how truly ground breaking Fanny Fern was, we need to understand that in a 1997 edition of an anthology of American satire from colonial times to present, Fern was the only woman writer from the 19th century in that text. Her satiric style and controversial subject matter was just what the oppressed needed to gain some support and give them a voice.

Reading through any one of the hundreds of ‘chapters’ that Fern has written, it’s easy to see that if English was her first language, sarcasm was her second. She wrote bravely and unashamedly, mocking her society’s unjust view on women. In her column, “Children’s Rights,” she boldly proclaims, “Men’s rights! Women’s rights! I

Abigail Adams married a man destined to be a major leader of the American Revolution and the second President of the United States. Although she married and raised men that become such significant figures during their time, her herself was played an important role in the American society. The events that happened in her life, starting from childhood and ending in her adult years, led her to be a Revolutionary woman. Three main reasons behind her becoming such a strong, independent woman was the fact that she married a man who had an important role in politics, growing up with no education, and raising a family basically by herself.

As the new world struggled to gain impendence from its mother country, Britain, native authors also try to develop their own style of writings. It quickly became evident that the search for a native literature became a national obsession. Then with the triumph of American independence, many at the time saw this as a divine sign that America and her people were destined for greatness. Greatness came with a strong nation and thousands of poems and stories that still shape our nation. The recent revolution greatly expressed the heart of the American people. However, it would take another fifty years of development throughout American before it produced the first great generation of American writers such as, Washington Irving, Ralph

    Sedgwick was not the only American novelist who wrote about these things, other writers such as James Fenimore Cooper also wrote about romance and lifestyles/relationships between the english and indians. Hannah Foster also wrote about romance and women having a voice for themselves and gaining some type of equality in society between men and women. In The Western Monthly Review dated back to 1827, a critic offers a mixed response to Hope Leslie, terming its writing “handsome”, but also noting its stilled characterization”(“The Western Monthly Review 1827). The critic suggests that during that

During early American Literature, four new philosophies arrived with the arrival of a new nation. As more people from Europe came to the new world, culture sprang into writing and writing turned into philosophy. The religiously-oriented Puritan writers of the 17th Century were classified as Neo-Classic writers. Writers such as Anne Bradstreet and John Winthrop were early American writers who stressed the beauty, truth, and perfection under one god. In the 17th and 18th century, the Romantics opened the door for the founding fathers and artists to write about the world from a new perspective. Romantics acknowledge human beings as the failures that they are, but they also celebrate human potential for greatness. Writers such as Thomas Paine, author of “common sense”, write about strong beliefs based on the mind ,and not the words of another man. With many great artists and authors, both Romantics and Neo-classics give many great examples that aid in proving the periods existed. Through their syntax and structure they prove their loyalty to either Romanticism or Neo-classicism.

Limited opportunities for women to share their opinions publicly throughout the Nineteenth century caused an abundance of females to communicate their ideas through writing. Catharine Maria Sedgwick was among the first of American authors to publish historical and other fiction. Much of her work deals with the role of white women in society, especially involving the Cult of Domesticity or True Womanhood. Sedgwick managed to incorporate her unorthodox views on women’s behavior, relationships, religion, and people foreign to her culture, while still appealing to a broad audience. Her novels, A New-England Tale, published in 1822 and Hope

Fanny Trollope, an English novelist and writer, travelled to America in the early 19th century for a glimpse of life outside of England. In her work, “The Domestic Manners of the Americans”, Trollope captured her experience in countless opinionated, highly critical observations that judged Americans based on their behaviors and practices. Many aspects of American life captured Trollope’s attention, but these aspects were not seen in a positive light. It was obvious through her story that Trollope did not care for the American life; however, there seemed to be much more to Trollope’s opinions besides petty distastes. Trollope found the American lifestyle repulsive because it seemed to revolve around pride in their impolite and offensive behavior, creating an environment of arrogance and superiority over outsiders like herself.

According to Domestic Manners Of The Americans, “ we had repeatedly been told, by those who knew the land, that the second summer was the great trial to the health of Europeans settled in America; but I was now doomed to feel the truth breathing fever and death around I was in bed for nine weeks” (Trollope, 134). After Fanny Trollope’s four years of experience within America enjoying much of the natural beauty and abundance of the land, the friendliness and kindness of many people she met and the dramatic material advances, her overall impression was not favorable. In Contrast, Charles Dickens and Alexis De Tocqueville enjoyed and learned many new ideas and concepts during their travels within America, while Fanny Trollope traveled to the United States to experience what America had to offer and did not enjoy some of the experiences she went through. Overall, Charles Dickens, Alexis De Tocqueville, and Fanny Trollope managed and experienced life within the newly found Americas in all new and different

Woolf demonstrates how women writers have often failed in this because of our frustration and bitterness with a world that presented to us and our writing not welcome, or even indifference, but hostility (41). She makes it clear that if there is ever going to be a “Shakespeare’s sister,” we must---at least while we are writing---swallow that sense of having been wronged, for it stands as an impediment to our creativity. This is the mental freedom that women writers must attain.

These women became the necessary forerunners of the successful women writers of the early 19th Century: Jane Austen, the Brontes, and George Eliot.

While reading many early Romanticism, Transcendentalism, and Realism works have you ever noticed authors views are predominantly parallel with the society and time in which they lived? American authors (men/woman) where thought of as revolutionary with their popular, well noted works, but their gender ideals stem from society’s views rather than their own perceptions. Without societies stipulations, these early authors could have been even more significant and influential than they already are thought to be.

Religious topics continued to dominate early American literature in the 18th century, for example, in the works of Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mather. Their strict Calvinistic, Puritanical views gave their writings a "fire-and-brimstone" type of style a inflammatory rhetoric meant to rouse religious fervor (Baym 103). Both Hawthorne and Herman Melville (another later generation New Englander) would focus some of their most important works of literature on their Calvinist roots. In contrast to these fiery preachers, however, were the mid-17th century poems of Anne Bradstreet, the first published female New England poet. Her poems are dominated by a steady calm and loving confidence in Providence and are much sweeter in tone.

The Colonial Period in American Literature Blake Quickel The Colonial Period of American Literature was vital not only to the timeline of literature in our country, but it shaped the values and tradition that we identify America with. Literature from this period gives us a look into the beginnings of our country from different views such as Poems and stories from Native culture, Puritans, and the founding fathers. These writings give us an honest view of the way of life during this time. The Puritan writings we read in this class were very interesting in how they showed the early stages of America’s religion. Although religion in our government and our country’s values has become less and less extreme over time, it is amazing knowing how much control it had over society in our country’s beginnings; and many of the morals exorcised in the Puritan culture are still values relevant to our society today. In a reading from the “Introduction: Puritan Voices” assignment (a), the writer refers to the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a “man’s world”, describing the limited roles of women in society and how men were portrayed in the church as superior. Puritan ministers often preached that the soul had two parts, the immortal masculine half, and the mortal feminine half. Gender inequality is an enormous part of American Literature throughout all periods, and here you can see where these values originated in our country. Puritan society exists as a valid demonstration for why the first