Inventing Americas: 1800–1865 159presumably, that discloses both the differences and the links between rich and poor
women she alludes to here. “Who shall write this bold, frank, truthful book remains
to be seen,” she concludes. Meanwhile, “woman’s millennium is yet a great way off,”
and “conservatism and indifference gaze through their spectacles at the seething
elements of today, and wonder ‘what ails our women?’ ”
Fern herself tried her hand at writing, if not a great, then a useful book about
women: Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time (1855). “I present you with
my first continuous story,” Fern wrote in her “Preface: To the Reader.” “I do not
dignify it by the name of ‘A Novel.’ I am aware that it is entirely at variance with all
set rules for novel-writing.” There was, as always, truth in what she said. Fern drew
heavily on her own experiences in the book. Like her creator, Ruth Hall suffers an
early widowhood and is forced to make a living for herself. She decides to become a
writer, despite the discouragement of her brother, who tells her, “writing can never
be your forte; you have no talent that way.” “I can do it,” she tells herself, “I feel it.
I will do it.” And, by the end of the story, she has succeeded. Her book of articles has
been published, and she is secure in her profession as a journalist and essayist. Ruth
Hall is not an autobiography, however. Fanny Fern married not long after widowhood,
and was to marry again, while Ruth does not. Neither is it a romantic or sentimental
novel. Reversing the conventional pattern, the book begins with marriage (to a man
who, of course, then dies leaving Ruth a widow) and ends with the heroine as a
successful career woman. It focuses, not on the domestic scene, but on the literary
marketplace in which Ruth must make her way. And the narrative consists, as Fern
herself points out in her preface, not of the “long introductions and descriptions”
of the traditional nineteenth-century novel but, rather, of a series of brief episodes
and vignettes. “I ... have entered unceremoniously and unannounced into people’s
houses, without stopping to ring the bell,” Fern warns the reader. There is only
limited narrative exposition, character analysis, and development. What the reader
is offered is a succession of brief scenes, snatches of overheard conversation,
something remarkably close in many ways to the clipped, disjunctive patterns of the
modern novel. Ruth Hall is not a modern novel, of course, and there is plenty to
remind us of that. The language is very often florid and elaborate: when Ruth posts
a letter to her editor, for instance, she is said to have the same hopeful feelings as
Noah had when he sent forth a dove from the ark. There are some remarkable plot
coincidences, some Dickensian comic characters, and no less than three big deathbed
scenes. Nevertheless, what Fern describes as her “primitive mode” of writing does set
her at odds with contemporary convention: in tone and narrative rhythm, this is
very unlike the standard “domestic tale of the present time.” And what sets it even
more at odds is Fern’s evident decision to make the story of Ruth Hall a kind of
answer to the “appalling question” she had her “dainty fashionist” and “care-worn
working-girl” ask themselves in “The Working-Girls of New York.” By the end of the
novel, Ruth has made something of herself, and found that marriage and widowhood
are not all life has for her.
Of Sojourner Truth (1793?–1883), someone wrote in 1881 that she “combined in
herself, as an individual, the two most hated elements of humanity. She was blackGGray_c02.indd 159ray_c 02 .indd 159 8 8/1/2011 7:54:41 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 41 AM