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In Ruth Hall, Fanny Fern drew heavily on her own experiences: the death of her first child and her beloved husband, a bitter estrangement from her critical and unsupportive family, and her struggle to make a living as a writer. Her heroine, too, suffers an early widowhood and is forced to create a life that defies traditional assumptions about a woman's independence and her place in society. Although Fern herself eventually remarried, she chooses a different path for Ruth, and eschewing the usual 'happy ending' wedding expected by readers of the popular fiction of the period, presents a new kind of heroine: a single mother who enjoys a successful career as a journalist, a comfortable income, and a formidable bank account. Written as a series of short vignettes and snatches of overheard conversations, Ruth Hall is a unconventional in style as in substance and is strikingly modern in impact.
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