Fanny Fern: The First American Feminism

Fanny Fern: The first American Feminist In a time where a woman’s place was in the home, her duty was to serve her husband, and her hobbies included reading her Bible and birthing babies, Fanny Fern (Sarah Willis) dared to write. Her columns encouraged women to abandon the prospects of matrimony, and pulled back the curtain on the perfect American marriage. Fern’s writings challenged the ideals of marriage, sexual inequality, and religiously based modesty. During Fern’s lifetime, marriage was viewed as the most important accomplishment a woman would achieve. Following the death of her first husband, and the divorce of her abusive second husband, Fern’s opinions on marriage changed dramatically (McMichael 1901). Fern used sarcasm to highlight
Before her writing career, Fern struggled to provide for herself and her children after her first husband’s untimely death, and she re-married. At the end of her two year marriage, she found employment as a seamstress and a school teacher. Because the salary for women’s jobs was not equal to men’s, she was still unable to provide for herself and her children. Recognizing that this was a serious problem for women in America, she began incorporating issues regarding sexual inequality into her columns. She “was uniquely positioned to change the publication industry's business ethics, the subject of so much of her writing,” (Dowling 348). Fern outlines the embarrassment and frustration a wife feels when having to ask her husband for money in “Aunt Hetty on Matriomony.” Many women had no access to their finances during this time, and this made it difficult for women to file for divorce if they wished to leave their marriages. Although the United States did make progress regarding women’s rights, equal pay, and equal rights in the 19th century, Fanny Fern still continued writing and encouraging women to demand full equality (Women’s Rights and their