158 Inventing Americas: 1800–1865fruitless: Nathaniel pronounced her writing vulgar and advised her to make a living
in some unobtrusive trade such as shirtmaking. Nevertheless, Sara Willis persevered,
and she sold her first story in 1851. Soon, she was publishing articles and reviews
regularly under her pen name and becoming famous. Her first collection of articles,
Fern Leaves from Fanny’s Portfolio, appeared in 1853 and rapidly became a bestseller.
Little Ferns from Fanny’s Little Friends, a collection of essays for children, followed in
the same year; next year, the second series of Fern Leaves from Fanny’s Portfolio was
published. Over the following twenty years, her essays, articles, and other writing for
various journals, and collections such as Fresh Leaves (1857), Folly as It Flies (1868),
and Ginger Snaps (1870), were to establish her as one of the most famous women
writers in the nation.
The essays and articles written under the name of Fanny Fern are generally
marked by a lively, gossipy style, full of exclamations and rapid asides. There is plenty
of sentiment, but there is also plenty of wit. “Hints to Young Wives,” for example,
published in 1852, pokes fun at all the manuals that labor under this title. “Shouldn’t
I like to make a bonfire of all the ‘Hints to Young Wives,’ ” Fern declares. “I have a
little neighbor who believes all they tell is the gospel truth, and lives up to it,” she
goes on. “The minute she sees her husband coming up the street, she makes for the
door, as if she hadn’t another moment to live ... then chases around (like a cat in a
fit) ... warms his slippers and puts ’em on, and dislocates her wrist carving at table
for fear it will tire him.” There are also articles that deal in a more openly serious way
with the plight of women. In “Soliloquy of a Housemaid” (1854), for example, Fern
adopts the persona of an overstretched house servant to voice the trials and anxieties
of working-class women. In “Critics” (1854) and “Mrs. Adolphus Smith Sporting the
‘Blue Stocking’ ” (1854) she takes on the more personal theme of the problems of the
woman who wants to be a writer, faced with the prejudice of a male literary
establishment and, quite probably, the demands of being a wife and mother as well.
“Independence” (1854) is more humorous in tone but, like many of these pieces,
nonetheless serious in purpose for that. “ ‘FOURTH OF JULY.’ Well – I don’t feel
patriotic,” Fern begins. “I’m glad we are all free; but as a woman – I shouldn’t know
it.” “Can I go out at evening without a hat at my side?” she asks. “Can I stand up in
the cars ‘like a gentleman’ without being immediately invited ‘to sit down?’ ” “Can I
even be President? Bah – you know I can’t. ‘Free!’ Humph!” And another article,
“The Working-Girls of New York” (1868), makes no concessions to humor as Fern
describes what she calls “the contrast between squalor and splendor” in New York
City: with “the care-worn working girl” and “the dainty fashionist” “jostling on the
same pavement.” Fern maintains a tactful balance here between her recognition of
the immense difference between these two female types, as far as their social and
economic situations are concerned, and her belief that, as women, their conditions
are nevertheless linked. She devotes most of her attention to the desperate lot of the
working girls, forced to work in factories where “the roar of machinery” is “like the
roar of Niagara.” But she still suggests that “the same appalling question” reverberates
in the heads of the “fashionist” and the working woman: “Is this all life has for me?”
“A great book is yet unwritten about women,” Fern confides to the reader: one,GGray_c02.indd 158ray_c 02 .indd 158 8 8/1/2011 7:54:41 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 41 AM