Her work "called forth a general burst of praise from one end of the Union to the other," said Louis A. Godey of Frances Miriam Whitcher, a pioneer in the creation of a female humorist tradition in American literature. In her brilliant social satires, collected in book form after her death as The Widow Bedott Papers (1855) and Widow Spriggins, Mary Elmer, and Other Sketches (1867), Whitcher tried to show that women's search for status was leading them deeper into degradation by forcing them to compete with one another on the grounds of wealth and other superficialities. Through her sketches Whitcher sought to open women's eyes to the folly of their behavior. For modern readers the sketches give insight into the domestic lives of women in the first half of the nineteenth century and shed new light on the history of the feminist movement in America.

Frances Miriam Berry was...