Fanny Fern’s “Mrs. Adolphus Smith Sporting the ‘Blue Stocking’” is brilliantly written. Only a female writer could create such a piece, most likely from personal experience. I’m sure both Fanny Fern and her character, Mrs. Adolphus Smith, received much criticism for leaving their children unattended in order to sit down and write their masterpieces. Fern wrote her character as a fellow authoress for newspapers and journals, which leads me to believe this was written due to some like scenario in Fern’s own home. I also find this to be a great women’s rights piece showing that men need to take some responsibility for things occurring in their own homes. Mr. Smith can’t even find his Sunday pants, much less save his own child from choking on a button. He also gets fed up enough to call his wife’s writing scribbling, which she more or less ignores because she knows she is in control.
I love Fanny Fern! Her literary wit always makes me laugh! I would agree that this is a great womens rights piece because it shows the difficulty a woman had balancing work and family within a society that favored family amibitions over intellectual ambitions.
ReplyDeleteMy best friend and I have a running joke about something like this: when she was a Social Work major, she said that she would eventually have to take my (hypothetical future) children away from me because I'd spend all of my time locked in a room writing stories. Now, I really don't think that this scenario will come true, but I can definitely relate to the tendency to want to shut everything else out while writing.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that Mrs. Adolphus Smith "ignores" her husband's jab at her writing "because she knnows she is in control" is very intriguing - and true. She has the knowledge (of where clothes are) and skills (to save babies from choking on buttons) that give her power in the household - power that her husband clearly does not possess.
Ha! Bethany's comment/anecdote made me laugh.
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