{"id":133,"date":"2016-11-30T17:49:51","date_gmt":"2016-11-30T22:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/?p=133"},"modified":"2016-12-14T16:03:54","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T21:03:54","slug":"fanny-fern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/2016\/11\/30\/fanny-fern\/","title":{"rendered":"Fanny Fern"},"content":{"rendered":"

Biography<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"fanny-fern\"Fanny Fern was born under the name of Sara Payson Willis Parton in 1811. She became widely famous in America for her autobiographical novel Ruth Hall<\/em> (1854), and for her humorous, satirical, and critical newspaper sketches and
\ncolumns. She was born into a literary family, as her father was\u00a0a publisher and her brother N.P. Willis a poet and editor. She got a superior education at Catharine E. Beecher\u2019s seminary. Stricken by the deaths of close family members, including her mother, her husband, and one of her daughters, Fern fell into poverty with little help from her remaining family. Her short pieces for Boston newspapers were collected and published as Fern Leaves<\/em> from Fanny\u2019s Portfolio<\/em> (1853) and became a bestseller. While the majority of the critics found fault with \u201cthe lack of \u2018female delicacy\u2019,\u201d (White: 871) literary great Nathaniel Hawthorne wholeheartedly advocated Fern\u2019s texts and deemed her\u00a0very enjoyable as an author: \u201cThe woman writes as if the Devil was in her \u2026 If you meet her, I wish you would let her
\nknow how much I admire her\u201d (Wood: 3). After publishing a second novel, Rose Clark<\/em> (1856), she refrained from bigger projects and focused on informal essays for the New York Ledger<\/em>. In New York City she continued to focus on everyday struggles and covered a broad spectrum of topics in her widely read newspaper pieces. She was
\nnot only the first woman to be a newspaper columnist in the United States but also one of the most popular writers in the entire country. Finally, she died aged 61 in 1872.<\/p>\n

Fun Fact<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fanny Fern was the highest-paid newspaper columnist in 19th century America.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Critical\u00a0Analysis of Tyrants of the Shop<\/em> by Felix Reich<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this newspaper column from the New York Ledger<\/em> Fern shows sympathy with shop-girls in the Manhattan mercantile district. More specifically, Fern\u2019s article provides the reader with a feminine perspective on women in the workplace. She draws a picture of contemporary working women as disempowered, muted, trapped, and embarrassed. She hints at the non-existent alternatives for women but to keep quiet and obey misogynist practices: \u201cbecause you know something about women`s wages and women`s work in the crowded city\u201d. With picturesque phrases she describes the feeling of being trapped in such an environment: \u201cthe air about had suddenly become too thick to breathe.\u201d With trenchant words she presents the dilemma the shopper finds herself in because albeit wanting to do help the shop-girls in the end \u201cyou bite your tongue to keep it quiet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Full text:\u00a0Tyrants of the Shop<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n

McCullen, Kevin. Fanny Fern in the New York Ledger<\/em>. http:\/\/fannyfern.org\/. Last access 11\/4\/2016.<\/p>\n

Warren, Joyce W. (1994)\u00a0Fanny Fern: An Independent Woman.<\/em> New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 1994.<\/p>\n

White, Barbara A. (2003) \u201cParton, Sara Payson Willis.\u201d Serafin, Steven R. (ed.) The Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature<\/em>. New York: Continuum.<\/p>\n

Wood, Ann D. (1971) \u201cThe \u2018Scribbling Women\u2019 and Fanny Fern: Why Women Wrote.\u201d American Quarterly<\/em> Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 3-25. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Biography Fanny Fern was born under the name of Sara Payson Willis Parton in 1811. She became widely famous in America for her autobiographical novel Ruth Hall (1854), and for her humorous, satirical, and critical newspaper sketches and columns. She was born into a literary family, as her father was\u00a0a publisher and her brother N.P. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3663,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[19,18,22,21],"class_list":["post-133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","tag-fanny-fern","tag-fern","tag-sara-payson-willis-parton","tag-tyrants-of-the-shop"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3663"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":290,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions\/290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}