1

Elena Abou Mrad

University of Turin - Department of Humanities

MA in Comparative Modern Cultures

25th

June 2014

Ruth Hall by Fanny Fern: an unconventional female

Bildungsroman

Ruth Hall. A Domestic Tale of the Present Time by Fanny Fern (pseudonym of

Sara Payson Willis) was published in 1854. In that period, novels by female authors

were so popular, that in January of 1855 the exasperated Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote to

his publisher:

“America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women,

and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with

their trash--and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the

mystery of this innumerable editions of the 'Lamplighter,' and other books

neither better nor worse?--worse they could not be, and better they need not

be, when they sell by the 100,000.”1

Ruth Hall, however, is different from other novels written by and addressed to

women: its plot, protagonist, and style prove that Fern’s book is an unconventional

female Bildungsroman. To prove this statement, this paper will compare Fern’s novel to

the two most famous bestsellers of the period: The Wide, Wide World by Susan Warner

and The Lamplighter by Maria Cummins.

1 Quoted in Mott, Frank L., Golden multitudes: the story of best sellers in the United States, New

York, 1947, p. 122.

2

Ruth Hall: plot and reception

Ruth Hall is an autobiographical novel: in fact, soon after the publication of the

book, it was clear that it portrayed Sara Willis’s life. Ruth is an intelligent and sweet

girl, but neither her brother Hyacinth nor her father appreciate her. She marries Harry, a

handsome and loving man, and they have three children; the only thorn in their happy

marriage is the attitude of Harry’s parents, who don’t like Ruth. Unfortunately, her first

daughter, Daisy, dies of croup, and, soon afterwards, Harry too dies of typhoid fever.

Ruth is left alone in poverty not only by her in-laws, but also by her own relatives: her

brother, in particular, refuses to publish her articles in his newspaper, telling her that she

has no talent. Ruth’s mother-in-law takes away her daughter Katy with deceit, and treats

the little girl harshly. Finally, Ruth finds an editor and starts publishing her articles; her

columns on newspaper soon become hits. With the publication of a book-length

selection of her columns, she becomes wealthy and manages to rescue Katy.

The reception of the novel was not unanimously favorable: although it was an

editorial success, selling 70.000 copies2, it was attacked by many critics. In fact, it was

immediately clear that the book was about Fern’s life, and that she was offering a bitter

portrait of her own family. She was accused of lack of filial piety, and Ruth Hall

aroused a violent reaction, culminating in the review of the book by the New Orleans

“Crescent City”, in January of 1855:

“As we wish no sister of ours, nor no female relative to show toward us, the

ferocity she has displayed toward her nearest relatives we take occasion to

censure this book that might initiate such a possibility.”.3

Putnam's reviewer found the book full of "un- femininely bitter wrath and

spite.".4 Fanny Fern was clearly "not sufficiently endowed with female delicacy,"

another reviewer felt; she had "demeaned herself as no right-minded woman should

have done, and as, no sensitive woman could have done."5

2 Ruth Hall and Other Writings, edited by Joyce W. Warren, Rutgers University Press, 2005

(original edition 1986), p. XVII. 3 Ibidem.

4 Editorial Notes-American Literature , “Putnam's Monthly. A Magazine of American Literature,

Science, and Art”, 5 (1855), 216. 5 The Life and Beauties of Fanny Fern , New York, H. Long and Brother, 1855, pp. 180,222;

3

However, she obtained a positive review from Hawthorne6:

“In my last, I recollect, I bestowed some vituperation on female authors. I have

since been reading "Ruth Hall"; and I must say I enjoyed it a good deal. The

woman writes as if the Devil was in her; and that is the only condition under

which a woman ever writes anything worth reading. Generally women write

like emasculated men, and are only distinguished from male authors by a

greater feebleness and folly; but when they throw off the restraints of decency,

and come before the public stark naked, as it were—then their books are sure

to possess character and value. Can you tell me anything about this Fanny

Fern? If you meet her, I wish you would let her know how much I admire

her.”7

Hawthorne was insisting that Fanny Fern, unlike her feminine competitors, was

daringly true to her fundamental experience as a woman, while her critics accused her

of betraying and lowering her feminine nature, and hence of being unfeminine,

unwomanly8.

Two examples of bestseller female Bildungsroman: The Wide, Wide

World and The Lamplighter

The Wide, Wide World was written in 1850 by Susan Warner, under the

pseudonym Elizabeth Wetherell. The novel is about Ellen Montgomery, whose happy

childhood is disrupted by the fact that her mother is very ill and her father has to take

her to Europe. The girl has to move to her aunt’s home, but the woman is unkind to her.

Luckily, the girl finds consolation in praying God and in the friendship of Alice and her

brother John. One year later, the girl discovers that her mother has died, and that she

had wanted her to go to live in Scotland with her relatives. Ellen moves to Scotland to

respect her mother’s will; on New Year’s Eve, John shows up and promises her they

6 Fetterley, Judith, Provisions: A Reader from 19th-Century American Women, Bloomington (IN),

Indiana University Press, 1985, p.244-245.

7 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, Letters of Hawthorne to William D. Ticknor, 1851-1864, NCR Microcard

Editions, 1972, p. 78. 8 Wood, Ann D., The "Scribbling Women" and Fanny Fern: Why Women Wrote , American

Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Spring, 1971), pp. 3-24, p.4.

4

will be together. In an unpublished chapter, they come back to America as a married

couple.

The book had great success: in fact, its first edition sold out in four months, and

it became a widespread fashion. Its popularity was increased by the fact that, thanks to

its moral and religious content, it was one of the first full-length novels allowed by

authority or conscience.9

The Lamplighter by Maria Cummins was another successful novel: published in

March 1854, it sold 40.000 copies in the first eight weeks, 70.000 before the end of the

year. The novel takes its title from the profession of Trueman Flint, a kind old man who

saves Gerty, the protagonist, from the streets. The girl is an 8-year-old orphan, who

spends her time in managing her benefactor’s home; they live with a poor Christian

family, which includes a boy named Willie. When Trueman Flint is disabled, she nurses

him until his death. Before the death of the lamplighter, the most nearly negative

character is Isabel Clinton, a beautiful and selfish girl, the daughter of a rich merchant

who becomes Willie’s employer.10

Gertrude becomes the friend and solace of a young

blind woman, Miss Emily, and, when Willie is sent to India, she cares for his ill mother

and insane grandmother. The girl acquires an excellent education and becomes a

teacher; her moral strength is an inspiration to everyone surrounding her. Eventually,

Gertrude meets her father, who had been in voluntary exile for a long time, and she

discovers that he was previously engaged to Emily. At the end, she is rewarded with

reunion with Willie, and her father marries Emily.11

Differences between Ruth Hall and the other novels

The first element that distinguishes Ruth Hall from The Wide, Wide World and

The Lamplighter is the plot. Warner’s and Cummins’ novels are about a little orphan

girl who, after an unfortunate incipit, and various adventures reaches happiness and

love, thanks to other people’s help and by her religious faith. Ruth Hall instead, is a

woman whose happy marriage ends tragically; she is left alone by her family and faces

poverty and difficulties in solitude. Thanks to her own strength, she manages to achieve

9 Papashvily, Helen Waite, All the Happy Endings, New York, Harper & Brothers, 1956, p. 4.

10 Frederick, John T., Hawthorne's "Scribbling Women", in “The New England Quarterly”, Vol. 48,

No. 2 (Jun., 1975), pp. 231-240, p. 233. 11

Ivi, pp. 98-101.

5

economic independence and becomes a famous columnist. As Fanny Fern states in the

Preface to the Reader, “There is no intricate plot; there are no startling developments,

no hair-breadth escapes”12

: the linearity of the plot is another difference between Ruth

Hall and the other two bestsellers. The involved plot of The Lamplighter was indeed

one of the secrets of its success.13

The main character shows a remarkable difference, too. Ellen and Gerty are the

incarnation of the idea of “true womanhood” so popular in the 19th

century. As Grace

Greenwood wrote in a letter “to an unrecognized poetess”: “True feminine genius is

ever timid, doubtful, and clingingly dependent, a perpetual childhood. A true woman

shrinks instinctively from greatness, and it is ‘against her very will and wish

transgressing’”14

This was a common opinion, supported even by science:

psychologists in the 19th

century declared that the “real” womanly woman had to be

quiet, placid and acquiescent, because submission was inborn in the female organism.15

Ellen Montgomery, in fact, is a lachrymose, pious and hypersensitive orphan16

. She

weeps so frequently that the author must use more that a dozen turns of phrase to

describe her crying: for example, her tears “almost choked her” “came faster than her

words”, “dropped into the water”, “followed in a flood”, “ran down her face and

frock”.17

Gertrude’s self-sacrifice culminates in the episode of the steamboat explosion

on the Hudson, when the girl, convinced that Willie loves Isabel, saves the latter’s life.

She even forgives Nan Grant, the old woman who treated her cruelly when she was a

child. Ruth Hall, instead, is an independent woman, both economically and mentally.

Ruth’s climb to success makes her the female version of the “self-made man”, a role

that, in nineteenth-century America was exclusively designed for men.18

Ruth Hall

12

FERN, Fanny, Ruth HalI, http://girlebooks.com/ebook-catalog/fanny-fern/ruth-hall/ (original

edition New York, Mason Brothers, 1854), visited on 27th

May 2014, p.1. 13

Frederick, John T., Hawthorne's "Scribbling Women", op. cit., P.234. 14

Greenwood, Grace (born Sara Jane Lippincott), Greenwood Leaves. A Collection of Sketches and

Letters, Boston, Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1850,

http://books.google.it/books/about/Greenwood_leaves.html?id=khIpAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y,

visited on 20th

June 2014, p. 310. 15

Papashvily, Helen Waite, All the Happy Endings, New York, Harper & Brothers, 1956, p.24. 16

Ivi, p.4. 17

Frederick, John T., Hawthorne's "Scribbling Women”, op. cit., p. 235. 18

Warren, W. Joyce, Fanny Fern (1811-1872), op. cit., p.56.

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becomes rich, famous and powerful through her own efforts, and not by marrying a

wealthy man, as often happens in the novels that were popular in the 19th

century.19

The style is another element that sets the difference between Ruth Hall and the

two female novels described earlier. In the 19th

century, the widespread idea was that

women’s writing should be characterized by “piety, lack of energy and resolute

disregard of conflict”20

. Susan Warner’s pious tone undoubtedly contributed to the

success of the novel and to the acceptance of its more secular portions, like romance,

parties and travels.21

In The Lamplighter, the complicated plot is reflected in an

involved language, as we can see in the passage in which Willie declares his love for

Gertrude:

"Is it so strange that I should love you? Have I not for years cherished the

remembrance of our past affection, and looked forward to our reunion as my

only hope of happiness? Has not this fond expectation inspired my labours,

and cheered my toils, and endeared to me my life, in spite of its bereavements?

And can you, in the very sight of these cold mounds, beneath which lie buried

all else that I held dear on earth, crush and destroy without compassion this

solitary but all-engrossing——" 22

This speech immediately sounds artificial: it is unlikely that a person, especially

a man, would talk like Willie in real life. In Ruth Hall, instead the characters’ speeches

are highly realistic: children, afro-Americans and poor boarders speak as they really

would do. For example, in chapter 42, Ferns offers a snatch of conversation between

housemaids:

“ ‘Yes, yes," said Gatty, "and here now, jess look at de fust peaches of de

season, sent in for dessert; de Lor' he only knows what dey cost, but niggers

19

Warren, W. Joyce, Fanny Fern (1811-1872), in “Legacy”, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Fall 1985), pp. 54-60,

pp. 55-56. 20

Wood, Ann D., The "Scribbling Women" and Fanny Fern: Why Women Wrote , op. cit., p. 7. 21

Papashvily, Helen Waite, All the Happy Endings, op. cit., p.6. 22

Cummins, Maria S., The Lamplighter, www.gutenberg.net (original edition New York, A. L.

BURT, PUBLISHER, 1854), visited on 27th

May 2014, p. 247.

7

musn't see noffing, not dey, if dey wants to keep dere place. But white folks is

stony-hearted, Betty.’ ”23

Another evident difference between Ruth Hall and the two other novels is the

tone: Fanny Fern has clearly written her autobiography expressing her anger towards

the people who have left her alone after her first husband’s death. 24

Throughout the

novel, the reader is driven to empathize with Ruth, and to blame her selfish relatives and

mean in-laws, who refuse to help her in the hour of need. In a mock review of one of

her later books, Fanny Fern neatly summed up the preconceptions her work failed to

meet:

“When we take up a woman's book, we expect to find gentleness, timidity, and

that lovely reliance on the patronage of ... [the male] sex which constitutes a

woman's greatest charm-we do not desire to see a woman wielding the scimiter

blade of sarcasm.”25

The Wide, Wide World has the explicit aim to show that faith can make people

stronger, and that everything happens for a reason. Its religious aim was noticed by the

Newark “Daily Advertiser”, which declared: “The Wide, Wide World is capable of

doing more good than any other work, other than the Bible.”.26

Even William Gammell,

an eminent professor and theologian, appreciated Susan Warner, who “…has succeeded

I think better than any other writer in our language in making religious sentiments

appear natural and attractive in a story that possesses the interest of romance.”.27

The positive religious didacticism of The Lamplighter is pervasive and

efficaciously dramatized. Gertrude’s religious instruction is provided by Emily, the

blind woman, and the process that leads the girl towards faith is clearly stressed.28

The

girl even manages to convert her father from skepticism and pessimism to love and

religion, as a final note states: “all things speak a holy peace to the new-born heart of

23

Fern, Fanny, Ruth HalI, p. 124. 24

Fetterley, Judith, Provisions: A Reader from 19th-Century American Women, op. cit., p.241. 25

Wood, Ann D., The "Scribbling Women" and Fanny Fern: Why Women Wrote , op. cit., pp. 4-5.

The quotation is from Ethel Parton, Fanny Fern: An Informal Biography, Chap. 8, unpublished MS

in Parton Collection in Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. 26

Papashvily, Helen Waite, All the Happy Endings, op. cit., p.3.

27 Ivi, p. 6. 28

Frederick, John T., Hawthorne's "Scribbling Women", op. cit., pp. 234-235.

8

him who has so long been a man of sorrow.”.29

The title of the book may be seen as a

metaphor for the light of faith. 30

Ruth Hall’s aim, instead, is not religious education or the revival of faith: as the

author states in the Preface to the Reader, she wishes to bring a sparkle of hope to the

readers:

Still, I cherish the hope that, somewhere in the length and breadth of the land,

it may fan into a flame, in some tried heart, the fading embers of hope, well-

nigh extinguished by wintry fortune and summer friends.31

Conclusions

Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall may be read as an unconventional female

Bildungsroman, not only for its plot and protagonist, but also for its style, for which the

author was accused of lack of femininity. Fern’s autobiography is instead very

feminine, but in a different form from the other female bestsellers. In Ruth Hall, in fact,

although the protagonist has a leading role in her own life and in her family’s one, she

never stops being a woman. As Grace Greenwood described Fanny Fern in an article

contained in Eminent Women of the Age:

“By these things we may see that whatever masks of manly independence, pride,

or mocking mischief Fanny Fern may put on, she is, at the core of her nature,

‘pure womanly.’ “32

29

Cummins, Maria S., The Lamplighter, op. cit., p. 258. 30

Frederick, John T., Hawthorne's "Scribbling Women", op. cit., p. 235. 31

Fern, Fanny, Ruth HalI, op. cit., p.1. 32

Greenwood, Grace, FANNY FERN - MRS. PARTON, from Eminent Women of the Age, edited by

James Parton, Hartford (CT), S. M. Betts, & Company, 1868, p.84.

9

Bibliography

Primary sources

CUMMINS, Maria S., The Lamplighter, www.gutenberg.net (original edition New

York, A. L. BURT, PUBLISHER, 1854), visited on 27th

May 2014;

FERN, Fanny, Ruth HalI, http://girlebooks.com/ebook-catalog/fanny-fern/ruth-

hall/ (original edition New York, Mason Brothers, 1854), visited on 27th

May

2014;

WARNER, Susan, The Wide, Wide World, www.gutenberg.net (original edition

New York, Grosset and Dunlap, 1850).

Secondary sources

BAKER, Thomas N., Sentiment and Celebrity: Nathaniel Parker Willis and the

Trials of Literary Fame, New York, Oxford University Press, 1998;

Editorial Notes-American Literature , “Putnam's Monthly. A Magazine of

American Literature, Science, and Art”, 5 (1855), 216.

FETTERLEY, Judith, Provisions: A Reader from 19th-Century American Women,

Bloomington (IN), Indiana University Press, 1985;

FREDERICK, John T., Hawthorne's "Scribbling Women", in “The New England

Quarterly”, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Jun., 1975), pp. 231-240;

GREENWOOD, Grace, FANNY FERN - MRS. PARTON, from Eminent Women of

the Age, edited by James Parton, Hartford (CT), S. M. Betts, & Company, 1868,

https://archive.org/stream/eminentwomentheage00part#page/n11/mode/2up,

visited on 20th

June 2014;

GREENWOOD, Grace (born Sara Jane Lippincott), Greenwood Leaves. A

Collection of Sketches and Letters, Boston, Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1850,

http://books.google.it/books/about/Greenwood_leaves.html?id=khIpAAAAYAA

J&redir_esc=y, visited on 20th

June 2014;

HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel, Letters of Hawthorne to William D. Ticknor, 1851-

1864, NCR Microcard Editions, 1972;

MOTT, Frank L., Golden multitudes: the story of best sellers in the United States,

New York, 1947;

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PAPASHVILY, Helen Waite, All the Happy Endings, New York, Harper &

Brothers, 1956;

Ruth Hall and Other Writings, edited by Joyce W. Warren, New Brunswick

(NJ), Rutgers University Press, 2005 (original edition 1986);

The Life and Beauties of Fanny Fern , New York, H. Long and Brother, 1855;

WARREN, Joyce W. , Fanny Fern (1811-1872), in “Legacy”, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Fall

1985), pp. 54-60;

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

(New Jersey), Rutgers University Press, 1994;

WOOD, Ann Douglas, The "Scribbling Women" and Fanny Fern: Why Women

Wrote, American Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Spring, 1971), pp. 3-24.