Hello, my name is Annalice Weatherly, and I am a student at
LaGuardia Community college. In my
ENG260 novel class, I decided for my second blog, it will be a Creative writing
reflection based on Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall novel. In this blog, I explore a very specific part
of the book that caught my interest.
Ruth Hall was a naive
little girl who thought she just needed to improve her physical appearances to
be loved by her family, but as she grew from adolescent to a mature woman, she
realized there is a lot more to this world than what she originally thought.
She suffered through her mother-in-law’s cruel behaviors, her parent’s
abandonment, the loss of her first child, and her husband. She went hungry to
make sure her kids ate. She used her brother’s negatives attitudes toward her
as her motivation and became a bestselling author. Her braveness along with her
humility touched the heart of readers.
One of the
characters that truly intrigue me in Ruth Hall is Ruth’s mother-in-law Mrs.
Hall. Mrs. Hall is a very peculiar woman. She preaches things she does not practice and
she makes her own rules. She claims she
is a Christian, but her actions prove otherwise. “Young people , now-a-days, seems to think
that money comes in showers, whenever it is wanted; that’s a mistake; a penny
at a time-that’s the way we got ours; that’s the Harry and you will have to get
yours” (Fern 12). She is supposed to be
a good Christian and yet she won’t give her own daughter-in-law a penny if she
needs it. However, she doesn’t have any
problem taking her daughter-in-law’s pension money from her. She is always lecturing Ruth on how to be a
better person, yet she is the biggest hypocrite that ever works this planet.
“It is my opinion the child’s death was owing to the thriftlessness of her
mother. I don’t mourn for it, because I believe the poor thing is better off”
(Fern 50). What a cruel thing to say
about a mother who just lost her child; the child being your own granddaughter.
The climax of the
novel for me is Ruth’s success. Although
Ruth is very intelligent, she is also very humble. She suffers a lot, but she does not let her
pain get the best of her. As a matter of
fact, Ruth uses her pain and suffering to motivate herself and improves as a
person. I love how she proved to
everyone she could succeed. I would have
paid anything to see the look in her mother-in-law’s face when she found out
the book she loves so much had been written by non-other than her hatred
daughter-in-law. “Impossible! Screamed
the old lady, growing very red in the face, and clearing her throat most
vigorously” (Fern 261). Ruth would not have
said in your face, but I would. I
thought that was the best part of the book.
Works Cited
Fern, Fanny. Ruth Hall: A
Domestic Tale of the Present Time. New York. Penguin Group, 1997. Print.