Legacy Profile*Fanny Fern (1811–1872)

In 1851 a new and daring type of newspaper article captured the attention of American newspaper readers. Short, satirical pieces signed by an unknown writer, Fanny Fern, were published first in the Boston Olive Branch and then the True Flag and were immediately copied—pirated—by newspapers all over the country. The big question of the day was, "Who is Fanny Fern?" Was she a man (surely no woman could write so "indelicately"), or was she a woman (some of her articles spoke directly "to a woman's heart")? Was she young or old, married or unmarried? And, most important, was she a lady?

Fig. 1.

Fanny Fern

It was four years before the public learned that Fanny Fern was Sara Payson Willis, the daughter of Nathaniel Willis, editor and founder of two Boston newspapers, and sister of N. P. Willis, New York poet and journalist. Her meteoric rise to fame was accomplished without the help of—and in fact without the knowledge or encouragement of—her family. Like the heroine of her novel Ruth Hall (1855) (and like the male heroes of countless "rags- to- riches" novels), Fanny Fern realized the American dream solely on her own. And for this, she won the disapproval of her family and was criticized by her contemporaries—men, and particularly other women—because to thus succeed independently was "unfeminine." As she wrote in the New York Ledger on June 8, 1861:

There are few people who speak approbatively of a woman who has a smart business talent or capability. No matter how isolated or destitute her condition, the majority would consider it more "feminine" would she unobtrusively gather up her thimble, and, retiring into some out of-the-way place, gradually scoop out her coffin with it, than to develop that smart turn for business which would lift her at once out of her troubles; and which, in a man so situated, would be applauded as exceedingly praiseworthy.

Fern was pained but not immobilized by the criticism of her contemporaries, and she was able to distance herself sufficiently to criticize and satirize the conventional attitude. In 1857, for example, she wrote a satirical review of her own book, Fresh Leaves, which summed up—and ridiculed—the kind of criticism that was directed at her, and which provides us today not only with a delightful example of Fanny Fern's satire, but also with a revealing look at some contemporary attitudes toward women writers. (The review is reprinted following this Profile.)

Sara Payson Willis was born in Portland, Maine, on July 9, 1811, and her family moved to Boston when she was six months old. The fifth of nine children, she went to several schools, finishing her education at Catharine Beecher's Female Seminary in Hartford in 1829. There she made a name for herself as a "romp" and as a writer of spirited compositions. After living at home for eight years, in 1837 she married Charles Eldredge, a cashier at the Merchants' Bank in Boston. For several years Sara Eldredge was happy as wife and mother. But in 1844 began a series of tragedies which were to change her life forever: within two years her younger sister, Ellen, her mother, her seven-year-old daughter, and her husband died, leaving her emotionally reeling and, after her husband's death, penniless, with no way of supporting her two surviving children. Her father and father- in-law grudgingly gave her a small pension while urging remarriage as the best means of supporting herself. She finally capitulated, and in January 1849 entered into a marriage of convenience with Samuel P. Farrington, a widower with two little girls. The marriage proved to be a terrible mistake, and in January 1851 she took a step unprecedented in her family and shocking to her contemporaries: she left her husband. Her family was scandalized, and her father refused to resume support.

She tried to support herself by the few means open to women at the time: she did sewing, for seventy-five cents a week, and she took...