Untitled Document Fanny Fern Teaching Fanny Fern's novel Ruth Hall and her newspaper articles can be useful in an English or a Journalism course. Her journalistic style integrates clear language with a highly descriptive storytelling quality that transfers easily to her novel. One of the most popular novels of its time, Ruth Hall nevertheless presents a feminist view that went against the grain of majority thinking. She writes about love, marriage, children and death while stressing the importance for women of finding financial independence as a means of asserting identity and power. This novel can even serve as primary or secondary reading in a History of the English Language course.
Fern uses speech variation to mark social position in the story.
Teachers wishing to include historical background when presenting the novel can probe the reasons why comedy is the ideal genre for voicing new, oftentimes controversial opinions. Ruth Hall and Other Writings. Joyce W. Warren. The New Feminist Criticism.