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The Margaret Fuller Story and
Why We Celebrate
By Laurie James
Initiator of The Margaret Fuller 2010 Bicentennial Committee
Margaret Fuller is acknowledged as having been the most brilliant
woman in America. Radical and controversial in her day and age, she
was a world celebrity in the 1840s as well known as Gloria Steinem
is today.
She should be remembered not only as our foremother, but also as
first American to write a book about women’s equality. She laid the
groundwork for the women’s rights movement in the United States.
 Yet at least one contemporary scholar suggests that it is up to
future generations to decide whether or not she is to be remembered.
The inference is that her worthiness may be questionable. This is
similar to a statement by her close friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
when he wrote his summation that his friend Margaret Fuller only
represented “an interesting hour & group in American cultivation.”
His deduction is that her work was “without result” and her life
“was wasted.”
History and literary texts appear to ascribe to this same estimation
because time and again she is left out, ignored, not given credit or
stature. Thus, more than a century after her death Margaret Fuller
is largely buried in history.
Ahead of her time, Fuller overcame so many barriers and acquired so
many “firsts” that it is astonishing that she is trivialized in this
way and that most don’t know who she is or what she accomplished:
First American to write a book about equality for women
First professional war correspondent/ set standards for war coverage
First woman journalist on a big city daily, Horace Greeley’s New
York Daily Tribune
First woman foreign correspondent
First woman literary critic / set standards for literary criticism
First editor, The Dial magazine
First to lead paid “Conversations” (“rap sessions”/educational
groups) for women
First woman permitted inside Harvard Library for research
Fuller’s major book, Women in the Nineteenth Century,
reprinted several times since 1845, has influenced thousands of
women and men including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony,
Sarah Grimke, Mary Livermore, Paulina Wright Davis, Edna Dow Cheney,
Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Ernestine Rose, Caroline Healy Dall, Julia
Ward Howe and many others. Male contemporaries who infused some of
her ideas about women into their works include Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Theodore Parker, Henry David Thoreau, and William Henry Channing as
well as others.
In our second wave of feminism we truly stand on Margaret Fuller’s
shoulders as we begin to see Fuller’s ideas alive in the ideas of
Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, Gerda Lerner,
Caroline Bird, Robin Morgan, Jessie Bernard, Riane Eisler, and
others, as more and more women gain self-definition, develop
confidence and talents, participate and assume vital roles in
community and world.
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) was the eldest child of Timothy and
Margaret Crane Fuller, born in Cambridgeport, MA. Her father was a
lawyer and congressman who early recognized her precociousness and
guided her with highly pressurized lessons, from Latin to the
classics, as though she were a boy to be enrolled in Harvard. She
always responded successfully even though reciting to her father
after he came home late at night brought on headaches, nightmares,
sleep walking. She was considered an anomaly by classmates. This
reputation was to stay with her throughout her life. Edgar Allen Poe
was to comment about her, “Humanity can be divided into three
classes – Men, Women, and Margaret Fuller.”
Nevertheless, stretching her mind with such writers as Virgil,
Horace, Ovid, Plutarch, Shakespeare, etc., was a joy for Fuller, and
she was later to write, “Very early I knew that the only object in
life was to grow.” She was always a high achiever in school, and
hated the boarding school for young ladies in Groton, MA. She was
later to comment, “I was now in the hands of teachers, who had not,
since they came on the earth, put to themselves an intelligent
question as to their business here. They believed that exercise of
memory was study, and to know what others knew, was the object of
study. But to me this was all penetrable. I had known great living
minds – I had seen how they took their food and did their exercise,
and what their objects were.”
Like other privileged girls, she only attended school until she was
fifteen, since higher education, as well as Harvard and other
colleges, were closed to women. At home, she was dismissed from
domestic chores and she set a rigid fifteen hour daily schedule of
self-study. Truth was her maxim. “Give me truth!” she would pray
even at a young age. “Cheat me by no illusion!”
As a young woman, she served as reader/translator for Rev. William
Ellery Channing, and, always the center of attention as a lively
wit, mixed with the circle of young men attending Harvard, becoming
lifelong friends with many of them. There is no doubt she aimed for
perfection, as admitted, “I have learned to believe that nothing,
no! not perfection, is unattainable.” Still she knew she had faults:
“There is plenty of room in the universe for my faults, but I cannot
spend time thinking about them, when so many other things interest
me more.”
At the age of 23, her father unexpectedly died and her mother and
siblings were thrown into near desperate straits. Fuller as the
eldest took the helm. Luckily, she met and became friends with Ralph
Waldo Emerson who introduced her to his friend, Bronson Alcott, who
hired her to teach in his innovative Boston Temple school for
children. Following this she taught adolescent girls at the Greene
Street School in Providence, Rhode Island, and began to formulate
curricula for girls to develop self-confidence, self-respect, and
self-help. With her earnings she contributed to sending three
younger brothers through Harvard.
Soon Fuller and her friend Elizabeth Peabody became the only women
regularly admitted into Ralph Waldo Emerson’s inner-circle of
ministers and followers who were breaking away from the old forms of
religion and defining new ideas known as Transcendentalism. Both
women made incomparable contributions to this group.
Fuller was still pressed for a way to earn a living and help her
mother and siblings. She offered for a fee a series of "Conversations" for women, many of whom were privileged
Bostonians. Her purpose was to upgrade the minds of women whose
educations had ended early. She chose a theme for each session, such
as Greek Mythology, Beauty, or Life, then asked questions, inspired
discussion, and ended with a summary that included her opinions. Her
"Conversations" were extremely popular and, about the same
time, the Transcendentalists launched a utopian experiment in
communal living named Brook Farm in West Roxbury, MA, where she
often visited and gave her "Conversations". She was so well
received that the Brook Farmers built and named a cottage after her.
However, she thought utopia was impossible to build up: “It is a
constellation, not a phalanx, to which I would belong!”
The Transcendentalists further decided they needed a journal as a
“voice” to spread the new thought, and Emerson appointed Margaret
Fuller as editor of The Dial magazine. She generated the
layout and tone, solicited articles, edited, wrote fillers, etc.,
and Elizabeth Peabody, when needed, took on the printing.
Significantly, Fuller originated several major articles for The Dial
pages, particularly when the male ministers failed to meet
deadlines. With her essay "Goethe" she was one of the first to
translate and introduce Goethe’s writings to the American public,
all of whom regarded the scandalous German inappropriate to be read
even by ministers. Her article, "A Short Essay on Critics", set
up a philosophy of standards for criticism, and gave credence to
American literature at a time when literary criticism was not
regarded as a necessary ingredient in our country.
An essay on the equality of women led to her ground-breaking book,
Woman in the Nineteenth Century, which established her
reputation as a world celebrity and caused controversy, shock, and
discussion throughout the English speaking world. At a time when
feminine strength was seen as best when it was weak and meek, Fuller
took up her quill pen and shouted out in print, “Let them (women) be
sea captains, if they will!”
Fuller’s book, the first in America analyzing women’s role in
history and society, advocated an idea considered radical, women’s
equality, and is permeated with Transcendental values of
self-development, independence, self-reliance, and social reform. In
addition, she dared to analyze and equate prostitution with the
plight of married ladies, as well as to discuss androgyny and
same-sex relationships, something almost no writer dared to affirm
on the printed page. She emboldened, “It is so true that a woman may
be in love with a woman and a man with a man.” This was outrageous
in 1845.
With an offer from Horace Greeley to create a literary department on
one of America’s largest daily newspapers, his liberal New York
Daily Tribune, Fuller moved to New York City and established
herself immediately as a top critic, with Edgar Allen Poe as her
only rival. Her reviews and essay-like articles appeared regularly
on the front pages. Observing that American writers imitated
European styles, she called for a fresh, original American
literature emanating from the heart and soul of our vast new
country. “There is,” she wrote, “in every creature a fountain of
life which, if not choked back by stones and other dead rubbish,
will create a fresh atmosphere, and bring to life fresh beauty. And
it is the same with the nation as with the individual man.”
Social issues also became one of Fuller’s major interests, and she
regularly covered and wrote exposes of New York’s poverty and city
institutions. She was outspoken about needed improvements,
particularly concerning immigration, the orphanage, the poor farm,
the insane asylum, and the penitentiary. She called for a
satisfactory and healthful sanitary system, professional training
and standards, additional money for improvements, and advocated that
a half-way home be established for women prisoners who were released
from jail.
By this time, she was so well known that Ralph Waldo Emerson quoted
her as quipping, “Now I know all the people in America worth knowing
and I can find no intellect comparable to my own!... God forbid that
anyone should conceive more highly of me than I myself!”
Within a year she convinced Greeley to assign her the position of
travel and foreign correspondent – thus, she became the first woman
foreign correspondent. Traveling extensively throughout Europe, she
sent dispatches to the Tribune describing the gap between
appalling poverty and elegant social life. Literati welcomed her
into their homes, including George Sand, Thomas Carlyle, Thomas de
Quincy, William Wordsworth, Harriet Martineau, and others.
Arriving in Italy, she joyously cried out to Americans, “Italia! O
Italia!” This was where she felt she had long belonged. And she
stayed. Settling into Rome, she participated as a tourist, sending
dispatches to America in praise of the people and the colorful
historic sites, but soon she was, like the Romans, involving herself
in politics. She met a nobleman, Marchese Giovanni Angelo Ossoli,
who eventually became her lover. The two were swept up by the onrush
of the Risorgimento, a struggle to unify Italy since it was divided
into nine states that were ruled separately by princes, kings and,
in Rome, by the Pope. The Risorgimento was led by her Italian
friend, the formerly exiled Joseph Mazzini. At the helm of defense
was the military fighter, Joseph Garibaldi, reputed as leading a
legion of desperadoes. She strongly supported the people’s
resurgence and viewed the Italian Revolution as similar to the
American Revolution. Throwing her heart into the struggle, she wrote
penetrating articles -- the only news Americans had of the
escalating situation. She called for an American ambassador to
become involved. “Another century and I might ask to be made
Ambassador myself… but woman’s day is not yet come.” She felt that
the old powers were no longer legitimate, and she predicted that all
Europe, including Great Britain, would be under republican
government in the next century.
When the fighting broke out onto the streets of Rome, she was at her
window, and followed with detailed eye-witness reports. Thus she
became the first professional war correspondent. She paved the path
for war reporting for men and women correspondents who ventured into
the Spanish-American war and World Wars I and II.
Moreover, she was asked to take on the directorship of the hospital,
Fate Bene Fratelli, on the Tiber Island that had been hastily set up
for war wounded. Here, without experience in nursing, she spent long
hours as well as at the Quirinal, the Pope’s palace and gardens,
also allocated to convalescing soldiers.
In 1848 Fuller left Rome for the mountains of Riete where she and
Ossoli were probably married and where she gave birth to their baby.
(Scholars today conjecture about whether or not a wedding ceremony
took place because a marriage certificate cannot be found.) By this
time, Ossoli had been disinherited because he had joined the Civic
Guard and, as a captain, was fighting against the tradition of his
family’s alliance and service to the Pope. Needed at the front, he
could only visit Fuller for short periods of time. Fuller left her
son with a wet nurse, and returned to Rome where she could continue
covering the war and thus earn a living.
War was even more dreadful than she had imagined. A friend wrote her
that she surely must be glad to have the opportunity of carrying out
her principles. She replied “Would it were so! I found myself
inferior in courage and fortitude to the occasion. I knew not how to
bear the havoc anguish to the struggle for these principles… And the
sight of these far nobler growths, the beautiful young men, mown
down in their stately prime, became too much for me. I forget the
great ideas, to sympathize with the poor mothers, who had nursed
their precious forms, only to see them all lopped and gashed.”
In one of her last dispatches she made an impassioned plea to
Americans to prize and guard democracy and to extend support to
others: “Be on the alert! Rest not supine in your easier lives, but
remember ‘Mankind is one, and beats with one great heart.’”
With the defeat of the Republic and the French occupation of Rome,
Ossoli and Fuller fled to Riete, where they found their baby near
death because payment for the wet nurse had failed to make it
through the war zone, therefore, the wet nurse had fed the infant on
bread and wine. For a month they desperately nursed him back to
health, and then the three set off for Florence where Fuller began
to write a history of the Italian Revolution. Believing her book
could best be published in the United States, she decided to return
home. Their ship encountered a fierce summer storm with gale winds
off the shores of Fire Island, New York. On July 19, 1850 the ship
broke apart and sank into the ferocious Atlantic waves, and Ossoli,
Fuller, and their two year-old son drowned. Margaret Fuller was
forty years of age.
The astounding news of the tragic deaths staggered Americans.
Emerson sent Henry David Thoreau to Fire Island to see what could be
found or done. William Henry Channing also rushed to the scene.
Thoreau found only a button from Ossoli’s coat. Fuller’s and
Ossoli’s bodies never washed ashore. The baby was buried in a sand
dune by surviving sailors, and later moved to the Fuller family
burial ground at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, MA. Fuller’s
one and only manuscript of the history of the Italian Revolution was
never found. A box of love letters written by the Ossolis to each
other during the Risorgimento finally washed ashore.
Why should we honor and celebrate Margaret Fuller?
More than a story of a celebrity from the past, or of a life of
extraordinary accomplishment cut off in its prime, hers is a great
soul to be emulated, a determination to grow, a courageous demand to
search and speak for truth, a struggle to develop the mind to its
capacity, a boldness to overcome obstacles, a bravado to break with
tradition when others impede, an imagination and spirit to envision
beyond the ordinary, universally.
Isn’t this reason enough to honor and remember Margaret Fuller?
Women’s issues and the nineteenth century are Laurie James’
expertise and passion for the past thirty-five years.
Scholar/actor/author, she has initiated The Margaret Fuller
Bicentennial Committee and, along with Co-Chair Daniela Gioseffi, is
organizing events in New York City, while Rev. Dr. Dorothy Emerson
is organizing events and publications in the
Boston/Cambridge/Concord areas. James has researched, written and
acted in her original solo drama entitled Men, Women, and Margaret
Fuller, throughout the USA and parts of the world, has written four
books on Fuller as well as articles and docu-dramas which link the
nineteenth century with today’s concerns.
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