The Empowered Woman

I looked at Lauren Berlant's criticism "The Female Woman: Fanny Fern and the Form of Sentiment" and what her interpretation of Fanny Fern's ideas were. Berlant suggested that Fern was trying to create a new breed of women, who thought differently and redefined their roles in society. This new idea of gender and "owning oneself" led to an article by Gale Temple which developed a clear picture of the once patriarichal community that women were forced to live in and endure the oppressive behavior that males inflicted. Berlant's article then compared the issue of race and the issue of "owning oneself" and the capitalistic identity which it holds allowing for exploration of "fraught individualism" experienced by both Ruth and Fernin comparison to "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl".