Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time

I picked this up quite unaware that the story was largely autobiographical of the author, Fanny Fern (a.k.a. Sara Payson Willis). The book tells the story of a woman, Ruth Hall, widowed at an early age, left to provide for herself and her children. She does so by overcoming obstacles to cultivate a career as a writer.

Ruth is characterized as someone with the most saintly qualities and no ambition motivated by anything less than the purest maternal instincts. She is good-natured, humble, self-effacing, patient, good-humored, and savvy. Her family on the other hand, including her in-laws, her father, and her brother are all presented as unequivocally and unrepentantly awful people: cruel, miserly, egotistical, chauvinistic, petty, and show more avaricious. I’m not spoiling anything to say that Ruth prevails over all adversity and her no-good family gets their due comeuppances.

There are no pretenses about this book. It is exactly the kind of story that is appears to be and it lacks subtlety as a result. Everyone is a caricature and they interact in uncompromisingly obvious ways. The result is that the story comes across as heavy-handedly moralistic.

But I don’t want to end the review on this note. I did read the book and there are aspects of it that I enjoyed or at least appreciated. For one, this book was describing the author’s own experience as a woman publishing in mid-19th century America. I may have a hard time believing that the events of Fern’s own experience were as tidy or as starkly black and white as Ruth’s, but the story gives me some sense of what those experiences must have been, despite their sanitized presentation. As a modern reader, I would have appreciated more nuance and more of a presentation of the complexity and difficulty of being woman writing at the time. Would readers of Fern’s time have appreciated that? Maybe not. Perhaps what they wanted in an autobiographical tale like this is something closer to the unprepossessing tales of virtue the Ruth wrote about under her alias: “Floy.” So, I am trying to be conscious that my expectations come from a very different place.

There are aspects of Ruth that I do admire, like perseverance and determination. I also appreciate how Fern closed the book with a happy ending for Ruth that did not resolve in a marriage or some other intervention by a man. The man present in Ruth’s life at the end of the book, Mr. Walter, is not even really an agent or a benefactor but more like someone who used his position to help Ruth get her footing in the publishing world, a perch from which Ruth then created her own fortune. Mr. Walter and Ruth leave the story on equal footing, which is as satisfying as anything. show less

"Fanny Fern" was the pen name of Sara Willis Parton, who wrote this fictionalized version of her life and career. Fern was primarily a newspaper columnist, and this book chronicles her journey from dependent young woman to married wife to bereaved widow with children to successful entrepreneur. It's written like a series of newspaper columns, with short choppy chapters, jumping from location to location. It's a little over-sentimental at the beginning, and it takes a while to get going, but once Ruth becomes a newspaper columnist and starts navigating the 19th-century business world, it becomes very entertaining, even if most of the characters, Ruth included, are somewhat one-dimensional. And unlike so many 19th-century novels, it show more doesn't end with a marriage, it begins with one, and for Ruth that makes all the difference. show less

This is a novel by a woman writer in 1854, which was, I believe, rare. I loved it. My 5 stars reflect my feelings while reading and having read it. I cannot judge literary value but thought it was very well written and remarkably contemporary. The story is powerful.

Written in the early nineteenth century, Ruth Hall is a semi-autobiographical novel by Fanny Fern. The pseudonym Fanny Fern was used by Grata Payson Sara Willis, the highest-paid journalist in America during much of her career (around 1855). Ruth Hall tells the story of Ruth, a nature-loving girl. She marries Harry, does not get along well with her in-laws, and meets disaster when her husband dies. Left penniless, abandoned by her family, and needing to support her two daughters, Ruth must find the strength within herself to move on. The novel is of a hard-wrought success story: Ruth becomes a very successful writer, all by the skin of her own teeth and the workings of her own brain. She ultimately becomes very wealthy and retires to show more the country in solitude with her children, an independent woman.

As a sentimental work of fiction, the novel sometimes reads as melodramatic (especially when the intrusive narrator apostrophizes). However, the language is rich with description, and the story is touching. show less

Good story

Read this book for class. I enjoyed it. Not too many long descriptions, and didn't need prodding in the middle to keep the story going.

Read for class. Enjoyed it immensely for the story it told.