Kyla
Niedermaier
Hanrahan
English
360
February
13, 2012
Discussion Questions: Fanny Fern
11. Some
of Fern’s material seems to be controversial for her time. Do others think this
is the case or is this way of thinking feeding into the stereotype that women
of any time were demure?
22. In
Fern’s “Hints to Young Wives,” she uses humor to get her point across. What
does this do to the idea that women are unfunny? Do men find her style funny or
is this another gender gap?
Thinking about Fanny Fern as a shock jock a la Howard Stern is kind of impossible for me, (I like to think of her more as an edgier Ellen Degeneres, or something). But I do think women with Fanny's mind and outspokenness certainly always existed and went about life making an impression and doing great things (if always on a smaller, less well lit, less valued stage than they would if they were men of any kind of privilege). Perhaps you answer your own question here when you say That she was controversial. For something to be controversial, even if it is misunderstood or over/underrepresented, it must first EXIST, right? It has to matter.
ReplyDeleteI think that there might be a bit of a gender gap for the most part, just because what women find funny is not usually the same stuff that men find to be funny. There may have been a few men with broader minds who may have found her funny, but for the most part, i believe that most men were still too stuck in their ideals to find her as funny as women did and still do.
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