"Here I laid my finger on his lip"

In Fanny Fern’s essay Folly as it Flies, she begins to have a conversation with young gentleman who believes that women should perform their “duties” as wives and mothers without “constant complaint”. He compares modern day women to his grandmother, and before he could speak any further, Fern lays her finger on his lip. Fern is defending married women who are in need of praise from their husbands. She describes this comparison of the grandmother and wife as “discouraging,” because the wife is unable to find her own identity since she is expected to be like another woman. Throughout Fern’s essay she argues that women sacrifice their own lives in order to maintain a household. She also claims that men lack acknowledgment to their hard working wives and are unsatisfied if she is in short comings of achieving their high expectations.

Jenny Saenz