How a woman got away with writing in the 19th century

In the American Quarterly article “The “Scribbling Women” and Fanny Fern: Why Women Wrote” Ann D. Wood examines the selective hypocrisy of a literature audience that allowed the publication of female writers only on the condition that it be only a side project to those writers. The publication of Ruth Hall is notable precisely because it flies in the face of that convention – in fact, it examines the circumstances that often caused women to write, in an exacting and unforgiving manner. Thus the book was not well received in its time.

I was more personally fascinated by the utter denial in which males and other females received a female's work. Anyone who was female and wrote 1) couldn't be doing it for money 2) could really only be doing it "accidentally" 3) couldn't threaten a male writer, of course and 4) should remind her readers often of her domestic priorities. If a female were allowed to break this convention, she would then only be 1) crazy 2) consumptive 3) exotic or 4) utterly tormented.