Discussions A

FANNY FERN (SAR AH WILLIS PARTON) 1811–1872

Sarah Payson Willis was born in Portland, Maine, on July 9, 1811, the Sfth of nine children of Nathaniel Willis and Hannah Parker Willis. Two sons rose to prominence— Richard Storrs Willis as a music critic and Nathaniel Parker Willis as a poet, travel writer, journalist, and in^uential editor who had no sympathy for his sister’s career efforts and, according to Sarah Willis’s accounts, tried to thwart them whenever he could. Nevertheless, under the pseudonym “Fanny Fern,” she became a newspaper columnist and novelist and for years was among the nation’s best- paid and most famous authors. A master of the ironic vignette, Fern used a light touch to explore such difScult issues as gender inequalities in marriage, divorce law, prison reform, women’s suffrage, and the struggles of the working poor. In “Writing ‘Com- positions,’ ” newly added to this edition of The Norton Anthology, she even discusses the problem of writing essays for English classes! In her most pop u lar novel, Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time (1855), she addressed a number of social concerns; but, more important for the book’s success, she also offered a thinly veiled autobiographical account of her rise to prominence as a writer despite severe per- sonal hardships and the opposition (or indifference) of her family. The novel, like many other pop u lar works by women in the de cade, tapped into American traditions by applying Franklinesque and Emersonian notions of industry and self- reliance to women’s lives; the speciSc autobiographical content illuminated the challenges faced by aspiring women writers who were also wives and mothers.

Sarah Willis learned something of the literary marketplace from her father, who in 1816 founded the Boston Recorder, an early religious newspaper, and in 1827 founded the Youth’s Companion, a pop u lar periodical for children, which he edited until 1862. Both publications were shaped by Nathaniel Willis’s orthodox Calvin- ist beliefs, which his free- thinking daughter came to reject. Educated at the Adams Female Academy in Derry, New Hampshire, and from 1828 to 1831 at Catharine Beecher’s Hartford Female Seminary, Sarah Willis excelled as a student and was renowned among her peers and teachers for her skills in composition. In 1837 she married Charles Harrington Eldredge, a cashier in a Boston bank. They had three daughters in a domestic life marked by debt and tragedy; the eldest, Mary, died in 1845 at age seven, and Charles himself died of typhoid fever in 1846 at the age of thirty- Sve. Neither her own father, recently remarried, nor her in- laws were will- ing or able to support her in a house hold of her own, nor did she move in with either set, as might have been expected of a new widow. What ever the reason for this divergence from the norm, Sarah Eldredge attempted for a while to support herself and her daughters as a seamstress. In 1849, perhaps out of economic neces- sity, she married her father’s friend Samuel P. Farrington, a Boston widower with two daughters. To judge from surviving documents and from the portrayal of the character John Stahle in her novel Rose Clark (1856), she quickly found Farrington jealous, tyrannical, and repulsive. She left him after two years, a revolutionary act for which she was ostracized by her own family. Farrington spread rumors about her misbehavior, refused to offer Snancial support, and in 1853 obtained a legal divorce in Chicago on the grounds of abandonment.

In 1851, Sarah Payson Willis Eldredge Farrington, having put her older daughter in the care of the Eldredges, began efforts to support herself by writing. She pub- lished her Srst sketch, “The Model Husband,” in the June 28, 1851, issue of the

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Boston Olive Branch, earning Sfty cents for it. When she submitted sev- eral unpublished sketches to her brother Nathaniel Willis, editor of New York City’s fashionable Home Journal, he rejected them, and according to her account, also discouraged other editors from accepting her work because of its supposed vulgarity and indecency. Continuing her low- paying writing for the Olive Branch, she developed as a writer, Snding her tone (colloquial, ̂ ip- pant, ironic) and adopting a new name; as “Fanny Fern” in the Olive Branch and in the New York Musical World and Times, she became the talk of the literary world and a genuine celebrity who was able to negotiate ever more favorable contracts. In 1853 she col- lected her columns in Fern Leaves from Fanny’s Port- Folio, which sold approx- imately a hundred thousand copies, an astonishing number for that time. Later that year, she moved to New York City and published the equally successful children’s text Little Ferns for Fanny’s Little Friends (1853) and then a sequel to her Srst volume, Fern Leaves from Fanny’s Port- Folio. Second Series (1854).

Fern published her Srst novel, Ruth Hall, in 1855, with a prepublication release in December 1854. It became a sensation, mainly because of its hostile depictions of the heroine’s family, whose names were known to many readers (its portrait of her editor brother, Nathaniel Willis, was satiric in the extreme). In addition Ruth Hall depicted a new sort of enterprising heroine, struggling for opportunities in a society whose laws gave husbands control of their wives’ property. The feminist reformer Elizabeth Cady Stanton, for instance, praised Fern in print for showing that a woman can “work out her own destiny unaided and alone.” Though some reviewers criticized Fern for embarrassing her family— the reviewer for the New York Times spoke for many in wondering how “a delicate, suffering woman can hunt down even her perse- cutors so remorselessly”— the negative publicity did not hurt sales; indeed, by calling attention to the novel’s autobiographical elements, such publicity made readers all the more eager to purchase the book.

On the strength of her fame, in 1855 Robert Bonner, editor of the weekly New York Ledger, made Fern an unpre ce dented offer, inviting her to write a weekly column at $100 per column (a Sgure comparable to $2,000 in today’s value). Her popularity was such that Bonner prospered under these terms, seeing the circulation of the Ledger— approximately a hundred thousand at the time Fern signed on— reach four hundred thousand by 1860, a large number for a journal even today. Like other forms of news- print, each bought copy of the Ledger had several readers. In short, Fern had an enormous readership.

In 1856, at the height of her success, she married the journalist and biographer James Parton (1822– 1891), soon to become famous for his 1859–60 multivolume biography of Andrew Jackson. (That Parton was more than a de cade her ju nior was rightly perceived as a bold statement of Fern’s politics of sexuality; in a similarly bold move, she insisted that Parton sign a prenuptial agreement disclaiming any rights to her income from writing.) Fern’s second novel, Rose Clark, based in part on her disas- trous second marriage, was published the year of her marriage to Parton but failed to have the impact of Ruth Hall. For the rest of her writing career, Fern, living with her

Fanny Fern c. 1866. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photo graphs Division.

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husband and daughters in Manhattan, devoted herself mainly to her column for the Ledger, which gave her a prominent outlet for her shrewd feminist commentary on the social issues of her day. Collections of these columns—Fresh Leaves (1857), Folly as It Flies (1868), Ginger Snaps (1870), and Caper- Sauce (1872)— were pop u lar with her contemporaries. She also published several books for children. She died of cancer in 1872. In 1873 James Parton published an edited collection of tributes, Fanny Fern: A Memorial Volume, which celebrated Fern’s in de pen dence, artistry, and important role in expanding opportunities for women in American journalism.

Aunt Hetty on Matrimony1

“Now girls,” said Aunt Hetty, “put down your embroidery and worsted work; do something sensible, and stop building air- castles, and talking of lovers and honey- moons. It makes me sick; it is perfectly antimonial.2 Love is a farce; matrimony is a humbug; husbands are domestic Napoleons, Neroes, Alexanders3— sighing for other hearts to conquer, after they are sure of yours. The honey- moon is as short- lived as a lucifer- match;4 after that you may wear your wedding- dress at breakfast, and your night- cap to meeting, and your husband wouldn’t know it. You may pick up your own pocket- handkerchief, help yourself to a chair, and split your gown across the back reaching over the table to get a piece of butter, while he is laying in his breakfast as if it was the last meal he should eat in this world. When he gets through he will aid your digestion,— while you are sipping your Srst cup of coffee,— by inquiring what you’ll have for dinner; whether the cold lamb was all ate yesterday; if the char- coal is all out, and what you gave for the last green tea you bought. Then he gets up from the table, lights his cigar with the last eve ning’s paper, that you have not had a chance to read; gives two or three whiffs of smoke,— which are sure to give you a headache for the afternoon,— and, just as his coattail is vanishing through the door, apologizes for not doing ‘that errand’ for you yesterday,— thinks it doubtful if he can to- day,—‘so pressed with business.’ Hear of him at eleven o’clock, taking an ice- cream with some ladies at a con- fectioner’s, while you are at home new- lining his coat- sleeves. Children by the ears all day; can’t get out to take the air; feel as crazy as a ̂ y in a drum. Husband comes home at night; nods a ‘How d’ye do, Fan?’ boxes Charley’s ears; stands little Fanny in the corner; sits down in the easiest chair in the warmest nook; puts his feet up over the grate, shutting out all the Sre, while the baby’s little pug nose grows blue with the cold; reads the newspaper all to himself; solaces his inner man with a cup of tea, and, just as you are laboring under the hal- lucination that he will ask you to take a mouthful of fresh air with him, he puts on his dressing- gown and slippers, and begins to reckon up the family expenses; after which he lies down on the sofa, and you keep time with your needle, while he sleeps till nine o’clock. Next morning, ask him to leave you a ‘little money,’ he looks at you as if to be sure that you are in your right mind,

1. From Fern Leaves from Fanny’s Port-Folio (1853); the column Srst appeared in the Decem- ber 6, 1851, issue of the Olive Branch. 2. During the 19th century, antimony was a drug commonly prescribed to treat fever and pneumonia. 3. Historical icons of male power: Napoleon

(1769– 1821), French general, attempted to con- quer Eu rope; Nero (37– 68), emperor of Rome; Alexander the Great (356– 323 b.c.e.), king of Macedonia and the conqueror of the Greek city- states. 4. One of the Srst friction matches, developed in London during the 1820s.

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