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from Virginia Blain, Isobel Grundy, Patricia Clements, The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990] p. 406
Gage, Frances Dana (Barker), 'Aunt Fanny', 1808-80, journalist, temperance novelist and women's rights activist, b. Marietta, Ohio, da. of Elizabeth (Dana) and Joseph B., farmer. Both parents were concerned with social issues. In 1829 she m. lawyer James L. G.; she had eight children. She moved to St. Louis in 1853, where her outspoken anti-slavery opinions brought social ostracism and threats of violence, while journals refused her articles. In 1854 she lectured in Iowa on women's suffrage; she addressed the Nebraska Legislature on the same topic the following year. When war broke out she went to the front to urge Northerners to give help to the freed slaves. She also lectured to temperance organizations, and her first novel, Elsie Magoon, 1867, shows how men's drinking can victimize women in the particular context of Ohio frontier life. Elsie protests: 'The law is a barbarism. . . it is monstrous, to give a man all the property of his wife, all her labor, all her mind and soul' (146). FG's next two novels pursue the temperance theme. Gertie's Sacrifice, 1869, describes the degradation of society women who take to drink, while Steps Upward, 1870, illustrates the dilemma of the heroine whose father is a drunkard and to whom marriage offers the only possibility of improving her social situation. FG's Poems, 1867. treats homely topics alongside contemporary political issues; 'The Perplexed Housekeeper' complains with acute insight about 'doing the work of six;/ For the sake of being supported!' As 'Aunt Fanny,' her contributions to Amelia Bloomer's The Lily and other feminist papers intersperse practical household advice with witty reflections on women's position in society and satirical treatment of anti-suffrage correspondents. See L. P. Brockett and Mary Vaughn, Women's Work in the Civil War, 1867, for an account of her life.
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last updated February 2002