The Subversion of the Sentimental Ideologies: Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall, A “Modern” Novel

Abstract

The Subversion of the Sentimental Ideologies: Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall, A “Modern” NovelHyewon ShinFanny Fern’s Ruth Hall (1855) is an interesting variation of the nineteenth-century sentimental novel in its fluid form, style, and theme. Most importantly, the domestic ideologies of marriage, family, religion, and woman’s virtue cherished by the mid nineteenth-century American society are completely exploded in the novel. The novel does not follow the Victorian sentimental plot of a complete sexual union and an ethic of holy family. Neither Ruth’s broken family nor her lost home are completely restored at the end, despite the reunion of Ruth and her daughters and her success as a writer. The novel ends with Ruth’s final departure from the city, the backdrop of her successful career, and this suggests the protagonist’s permanent homelessness in a transforming society, which is the universal condition of modernity. In this sense, Ruth Hall anticipates the advent of the modern novel as early as in the 1850s.