WHY MARGARET FULLER SHOCKED AMERICANS

●  She did not conform to the accepted standard of womanhood. She was considered ugly, bright, arrogant, aggressive, outspoken. “Truth at all costs” was her maxim.

●  She ventured a love liaison with a Roman nobleman ten years younger than herself, not equally educated or intellectual, who was a Catholic, and could not speak English.

●  She scandalously gave birth, it was rumored, out of wedlock, secretly.

●  She outrageously read, translated, wrote about, and promoted the work of Goethe at a time when even most intellectual men refused to touch his writings, because of his scandalous life at court.

●  She boldly wrote the first book in America advocating equality for women and men.

●  She dared to explode myths and hypocrisy in friendship, love, marriage, celibacy, and was one of the first to write about homosexuality as being natural and acceptable in society.

●  She audaciously defended in print the character and actions of George Sand and Madame de Stael, both of whom had had open love affairs.

●  She sympathized in print with the poor and insane, and cited the need for halfway houses for jailed prostitutes during an era when women were not supposed to acknowledge that such women existed.

●  She challenged men to pattern their sexual lives after the same high ideals society held for women.

●  She stingingly criticized the work of Longfellow, Poe, Emerson, Lowell and others, and called for a new growth of American literary geniuses.

●  She stubbornly became a New York literary critic when New York was considered culturally disadvantaged, and journalism was considered unfitting employment for a woman, especially for one not married.

●  She pleaded the causes of slavery, the Indian, and the Irish immigrant when public opinion on these issues was controversial.

●  She praised the “villainous” Rousseau, and attacked the vulgar, unthinking American traveler in Europe.

●  She gallantly proclaimed herself a citizen of Italy, and joined the Italian Revolution of 1848-9, directing a hospital for the war wounded.

●  Her service as Regolatrice (director) in two Italian hospitals pre-dates the work of Florence Nightingale, (“Lady with the Lamp” Crimea War, 1854) and Clara Barton (Superintendent of Nurses, Civil War, 1864). Probably Fuller inspired Florence Nightingale since Fuller was organizing the hospitals when Nightingale visited Rome.