The Domestic Transcendentalism of Fanny Fern

Abstract

In rediscovering Fanny Fern (Sara Willis Parton), critics have focused on the elements that make her most accessible to contemporary audiences: her feminism and lively style.1 Joyce W. Warren, discussing her revolutionary writing style (Fanny Fern, Performative, 17), draws parallels to gangsta rap, and in particular, to those female performers who redefine the conventional definition of 'woman' (22). Elizabethada A. Wright, focusing on irony and black signifying, reaches a similar conclusion, noting that Fern use[d] supposed norms to destabilize many culturally sanctified beliefs and wound up trouncing the patriarchy (109). And Alfred Habegger underscores her rebellious irony by quoting a mock-review she wrote of her own writing (887). Thus, although Ann Wood refers to the strategy by which the sentimentalists eschewed the role of professional writer while writing professionally {5-7), Fanny Fern, in Elaine Showalter's words, spoke of writing as a form of resistance for women imprisoned by their social and sexual roles (116). This outspoken feminist sensibility is what finds its way into most collections of American literature. For example, The Heath Anthology of American puts Fern in a section entitled Literature and 'The Woman Question' (Lauter, 2031-38). Of the six selections, only one is a sentimental sketch of a widow and her two children striving to keep warm on a frigid December evening by remembering their former days of happiness when papa was alive (2032-33). The other excerpts from Fern are first-person pieces in which she ridicules conventional wisdom about woman's place in the home (2031-32); criticizes society for mistreating its female servants (2033-34); lambastes the aesthete Apollo Hyacinth, a thinly veiled reference to Fern's brother who refused to help her when she was struggling financially (2034-35); defends, ironically, male critics of women's books (2035-36); depicts humorously a female author torn between her desire to write and the domestic catastrophes that keep occurring around her; and denounces Independence Day in a country that restricts freedom for its women (2036-37). The Norton Anthology of American is similarly