They disagreed about much, but on one thing they were agreed – Ruth had made her bed and she must lie in it! And so Ruth moved to a cheap boarding house, where she struggled to support her daughters, struggled to keep going as wealthier friends snubbed her. She was nearly destitute, and neither her father nor her in-laws were prepared to help. Ruth’s world came crashing down when Harry was taken ill and died. She can’t – or won’t – accept that the young couple have struck out on their own, and chosen how they want to live. She thinks that she lets her children run wild. He works hard, he is very successful, and they move up in the world. Ruth and Harry are blissfully happy together. The story is told in a series of vignettes, looking at Ruth through many different pairs of eyes. And she was happy, because she was in love and the future seemed full of promise. He would be glad to have his daughter off his hands.

Her mother had died when she was very young and her father, a man who was both wealthy and parsimonious, had sent her away to boarding school. It begins beautifully, with Ruth, our heroine, looking out at the night sky on the eve of her wedding. Of course I should make some allowance for the fact that Fanny Fern’s ‘Present Time’ was in America in the middle of the 19th century, but that isn’t quite enough.įortunately I could see the heart of the story, and I am glad that I read it. There’s a lovely story, drawn from the author’s own experiences, a story with something to say, and at times it’s wonderful, but there are too many times when it is spoiled by the author pushing her point, her side of the story, a little too hard.

Ruth Hall by Fanny Fern