Fanny Fern's "'Blue Stocking'"

            Since I first read Fanny Fern, I have loved her writing. She clearly doesn’t like to be told what to do, especially if it’s on the grounds of her gender. “Mrs. Adolphus Smith Sporting the ‘Blue Stocking’” is in line with this, even though the narrator eventually gives in to her household’s demands. She tries to write her story with constant interruptions by her husband, children, and servants. The persistent interruptions force her to attend to everyone and everything else other than what she wants to be doing at that moment: writing. She not only stops writing; she stops in mid-sentence. She states, “it’s no use for a married woman to cultivate her intellect” which is even more true in her time, but can still be true today with the interruptions that a wife and mother deals with. The people who read this story when it was first published would have agreed with that statement and thought that women should not wish to learn, only to run a household.