Rose Clark

by Fanny Fern

Rose Clark, a penniless orphan, tirelessly strives to be reunited with Vincent L'Estrange Vincent, the father of her child. She maintains that they were legally married before their estrangement and that she is therefore not an unwed mother, a claim that most people reject. During her quest, she meets a divorced artist, Gertrude Dean, who helps her to navigate life on the fringes of polite society.

Genres: Classics

436 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1856

About the author

Fanny Fern, born Sara Willis (July 9, 1811 – October 10, 1872), was an American newspaper columnist, humorist, novelist, and author of children's stories in the 1850s-1870s. Fern's great popularity has been attributed to her conversational style and sense of what mattered to her mostly middle-class female readers. By 1855, Fern was the highest-paid columnist in the United States, commanding $100 per week for her New York Ledger column.

A collection of her columns published in 1853 sold 70,000 copies in its first year. Her best-known work, the fictional autobiography Ruth Hall (1854), has become a popular subject among feminist literary scholars.

Reviews

[Marne Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the books I analyzed in my thesis on Fanny Fern. That was only 12 years ago, but I had to go to great lengths to get a copy to read, and my thesis committee had to pass that single copy around as well, since none of them had ever read the book before. Things are so much easier now, for not only can you buy a print edition of this book from the University of Michigan, but you can also read it online for free at Google Books.

If you are a fan of Victorian literature, it would be worth your while to pick up this novel. To be honest, I remember only the broad outlines at this point, and I'd have to go back and either re-read my thesis or the novel itself to be able to tell you all the intricate twists and turns this book takes, but I know it captivated me while I was reading it. Fanny Fern had struggled between making her novels too safe and predictable (her first book, Ruth Hall) and too wild and crazy (her novella, "Fanny Ford," which you can find in Fresh Leaves), but here, in her third and final novel, she finally hit the sweet spot, with interesting and yet believable characters who do interesting and yet believable things. I highly recommend going to Google Books and trying it out for yourself!

[Kezia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't love it. Rose was a letdown after Ruth. The trope of the poor put-upon heroine who is also a model of virtue and fidelity wasn't as well done here as, say, Thomas Hardy or a dozen others. The villains are so villainous they're two-dimensional. And like Fanny Fern's sketches in Ruth Hall, which she warns us we might find unsatisfying, Rose Clark also feels like a draft, unfinished and unfleshed. The ending is rather abrupt and lacks the professional flourish I want in a novel of its era.

I have to sit with this one a while. Maybe its point escaped me.