The Fighting Fern

While I was reading, I kept thinking how Fern perfectly presents the duality women writers face in “Mrs. Adolphus Smith Sporting the ‘Blue Stocking.’” Fern writes her piece in such a way that not only to we see the overwhelming nature of the domestic sphere on the female writer, but we also her thoughts as secondary to that of the males. This domestic hierarchy is evident through Fern’s placement of the female thoughts in parenthesis we also see how the woman is pushed into the sidelines of everyday life. In fact, it is not till the lines referencing the destruction of the manuscript that the dialogue comes to the front of the piece.  My real thought here is how Fern only brings the woman’s thoughts to the front after an aggressive act (manuscript destruction), and what that says about the then fight for women’s rights and Fern's feelings about that that fight.