|
|
Article: A purchase on goodness: Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall, and fraught individualism.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- Studies in American Fiction
- Article date:
- September 22, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Northeastern University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Subjectivity, as the innermost core of the private, was always already oriented to an audience.
--Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
Scholarly assessment of Fanny Fern has in many ways paralleled the social reception of her most popular heroine, Ruth Hall. Both are portrayed as initially plagued by an oppressive, limiting, and condescending patriarchal community. They are then critically maligned and shunned when they attempt to throw off the shackles of patriarchy in order to write and earn money as independent women. In the end, they achieve a kind of miraculous triumph in that their writings--precisely for the way ...