Most newspaper or magazine columns would not be considered literary, regardless of their quality, but Fanny Fern's articles clearly assert themselves as literature. I think the way Fern treats her audience primarily determines this classification. She does not only entertain, although she clearly manages to. She also writes with an incredible disregard for nineteenth century sensibilities and successfully uses the literary devices of satire, sarcasm, and caricature to convey her controversial beliefs.
"Aunt Hetty on Matrimony" disguises a feminist critique of marriage as a character monologue that might be labelled today as "flash fiction." The titular character describes an in depth portrait of a nineteenth century family, which shows how "husbands are domestic Napoleons." The use of such a character monologue allows for a more realistic and unapologetic tone.
Fern also seems to specialize in the literary device of caricature, seen in "Fresh Leaves, by Fanny Fern," a review of her own work. In the work she satirically imitates the misogynistic tone of so many literary critics of her time with such lines as "How much more womanly to have allowed herself to be doubled up by adversity." The column also caricatures herself as "a muscular, black-browed, grenadier-looking female, who would be more at home in a boxing gallery than in a parlor," in order to expose the idiocy of such beliefs against women. This sort of tongue-in-cheek tone puts an enormous amount of faith in the reader, another aspect of literary works.
Fern's disregard for convention stands out most explicitly in "A Law More Nice Than Just." She says "Now, if any male or female Miss Nancy who reads this feels shocked, let 'em." With such a statement, she asserts this piece, and the types of articles she seems to specialize in, as a necessary departure from the literary subjects more common to her time period. It's somewhat ironic that this disregard for nineteenth century sensibilities and expectations seems to have provided her a reputation as one of "the nation's best-paid and most famous authors," as our anthology points out in her introduction.
After talking about how writing about ideology relates to how "great" literature is in class today, I think by some of the standards we talked about, Fern's wouldn't be credited as great literature. To me though, the way in which she addreses feminism and ideology, makes her work very literary. As you posted, she disregards convention and is so different for her time, writing with a strong and loud opinion rather then the feminine meekness expected from her, that she achieves "greatness" this way.
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