Overhearing Children’s Stories: Children’s Rights in Fanny Fern’s Newspaper Writing

This article argues that it is in Fanny Fern’s writing for children, her most sentimental writing, that she realizes her domestic and political mission to protect both children and adults. In her writing involving domestic children’s rights, Fern warns against the alienating influences that separate the adult from her child self as a disruption of identity formation. However, as Fern increasingly writes about children’s political rights, such as protection from intemperate adults, Fern turns toward the satiric. By devising an aesthetic especially for adults, Fern belies her reading imperatives by separating family members.