Fern, Feminism, and ENGL 360

I spent a few hours today finishing an abstract on Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall. In the abstract, I argue in part that Fern was (obviously) severely constrained in her writing of the book by widely accepted notions of feminine propriety. While looking through my notes, I came across this excerpt from an 1854 (I think) review of the book from The New York Times that confirms what she was working against:

If Fanny Fern were a man—a man who believed that the gratification of revenge were a proper occupation for one who has been abused, and that those who have injured us are fair game, Ruth Hall would be a natural and excusable book. But we confess that we cannot understand how a delicate, suffering woman can hunt down even her persecutors so remorselessly. We cannot think so highly of [such] an author's womanly gentleness. (qtd in Warren 124)

Please notice what this reviewer is saying: Fern could have written this if she were a man, but she’s not, so she shouldn’t have. How dare she seek revenge against those who wronged her? That’s for men to do. Women who are victimized should just sit there (gently) and take it. Because Fern didn’t just take it, we can’t think that much of her.

All the classic moves of suppressing women’s voices are here: shame, suggestions of a lack of feminity, and silencing. And this is in The New York Times, a mainstream publication in the nineteenth century, too.  Because Fern was awesome, though, she wouldn’t be silenced.

Anyway, this evening, while reflecting on both my abstract and the semester I’ve just completed, I wish I could share this review with some students who just took my ENGL 360: Literature and the Sexes class. For the most part, they did great work, but I was quite discouraged by how many of them were still, at the semester’s end, defending the nineteenth-century patriarchy (and, by extension, its effects which linger to this day). I also can’t believe that some of them still saw the course as engaging in some “male bashing.” It’s as if the clichés about feminism have morphed into clichéd responses from students when confronted by feminist thought.

On day, I could (and did) spend 30 minutes trying my best to eloquently explain how one might be even a bit understanding of Edna’s actions in The Awakening only to have some otherwise bright students say, “Yeah, well, she’s still a bad mother and I hate her.” On another day, I could offer the idea that John, the narrator’s husband in “The Yellow Wall-paper” doesn’t have to be an outright villain for the story to be horrifying. In fact, his rather ordinary (for his time) attitudes about his wife, her health, and his authority over  her make the story more horrifying. And somehow, the only thing some students hear is “John is a great husband!” and proceed to explain why in their final exam essays. “All he wants,” (and I am paraphrasing here from a composite of entirely too many essays that argued this point) “is for his wife to get better. It’s not his fault. And in fact, he’s right. She was sick! Who wouldn’t want a husband like that?”

It’s enough to make one a bit depressed. And I get so tired of the clichéd responses. Give me the benefit of the doubt, folks. Feminism doesn’t equal man-hate. In fact, it does a service to men who are also victims of the patriarchy (one of Gilman’s recurrent arguments). I’m not just making this stuff up or (and these words make any English professor want to scream!) “reading into everything.” So to return to the point above: artifacts like this New York Times review serve to remind us how incredibly pervasive and pernicious patriarchal attitudes were (and are). I’ll add it to my bag of tricks, so to speak, and soldier on.

Work Cited

Warren, Joyce W. Fanny Fern: An Independent Woman. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1992.