MARGARET FULLER (1810-1850)

by Laurie James

Radical and controversial in the 1840s, Margaret Fuller is acknowledged as having been the most brilliant woman in America. She was as well known as Gloria Steinem is today. Ahead of her time, she should be remembered as the first American to write a book about women’s equality. Not only did she lay the groundwork for the women’s rights movement in the United States, but she also made a major impact on cultural and social standards.

Fuller’s visionary book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, caused shock and discussion. At a time when feminine strength was regarded as best when focused domestically, Fuller took up her quill pen and shouted, “Let them (women) be sea captains, if they will!” She dared to equate prostitution with the plight of married ladies, to discuss androgyny and same-sex relationships – outrageous acts in 1845. Her book has been reprinted several times, influencing thousands, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton as well as 21st century contemporaries.

As one of her first successful ventures to earn money, she offered a series of “Conversations” for women, many of whom were privileged Bostonians. Her purpose was to upgrade the minds of women whose formal educations had terminated at the age of fourteen.

As editor of The Dial magazine, appointed by Ralph Waldo Emerson, she originated major articles. “A Short Essay on Critics” set standards for criticism at a time when literary criticism was not regarded as a necessary ingredient in our country. 

Editor Horace Greeley tapped Fuller to create a literary department on his New York Daily Tribune, and she established herself immediately as a top critic, with Edgar Allen Poe as her only rival. Observing that American writers imitated European styles, she called for an original literature emanating from the heart and soul of our vast new country.

Fuller regularly wrote exposés of New York City’s poverty and institutions. She was outspoken about needed improvements concerning immigration, the orphanage, the poor farm, the insane asylum, and the penitentiary. She called for a healthful sanitary system, professional training and money for improvements, and advocated a half-way home for released women prisoners.

As the first war correspondent writing eyewitness reports in Italy, she viewed the Italian Revolution of 1848-49 as similar to the American Revolution. Throwing her heart into the people’s struggle, she wrote the only news Americans had of the escalating situation. She called for an American ambassador and predicted that Europe would be under republican government in the next century. Her heartfelt dispatches paved the way for war correspondents who covered the Spanish-American War and World Wars I and II. Moreover, predating Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton, she was asked to take on the directorship of the Fatebenefratelli hospital on the Tiber Island that had been hastily set up for war wounded. 

More than a story of a life of extraordinary accomplishment, hers is a great soul to be emulated, a determination to grow, a courageous demand to speak for truth, a struggle to develop the mind, a boldness to overcome obstacles, a bravado to break with tradition, and an imagination and spirit to envision beyond the ordinary, universally.

We truly stand on Margaret Fuller’s shoulders.

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LAURIE JAMES

Author/actor Laurie James was the Margaret Fuller scholar for three years in the Great Plains Chautauqua and has performed her original solo dramatization, Men, Women, and Margaret Fuller, throughout the USA and other parts of the world in theatres, colleges, libraries, and conference sites. At the Edinburgh Fringe Festival she received critical acclaim and appeared on BBC-Scotland. As Project Director/Initiator of The Margaret Fuller 2010 Bicentennial Celebration, she presented her original play, “A Medley for Margaret Fuller,” at CUNY Graduate Center, and staged numerous celebratory events in New York City.  

James has published several books: Men, Women, and Margaret Fuller; The Wit and  Wisdom of Margaret Fuller Ossoli; Why Margaret Fuller Ossoli Is Forgotten; How I Got to Harvard: Off and On Stage with Margaret Fuller; and Outrageous Questions: The Legacy of Bronson Alcott and America’s One Room Schools. 

She has received the 2009 Margaret Fuller Award from the Unitarian Universalist Woman’s Federation, the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and the Distinguished Alumni Award from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. 

To learn more about Laurie James, visit www.lauriejames.net.

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MARGARET FULLER

• First American to write a book about equality for women; laid the groundwork for the American women’s rights movement

• First professional war correspondent; set standards for war coverage

• First woman journalist and foreign correspondent on Horace Greeley’s New York Daily Tribune
  
• First editor, The Dial magazine, and first woman literary critic; set standards for literary criticism
  
• First to lead paid “Conversations” (educational groups) for women, and first woman permitted inside Harvard Library for research

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QUOTES BY MARGARET FULLER

“Let women be sea captains, if they will!”

“Mankind is one and beats with one great heart.”

“Only a noble fearlessness can give wings to the mind.”

“I now know all the people in America and can find no intellect comparable to my own. God forbid that anyone should conceive more highly of me than I myself.”

“Truth at all cost.”

“Very early I knew that the only object in life was to grow.”

TIMELINE
1810	Born May 23, Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, firstborn of Margaret Crane Fuller, former teacher, and Timothy Fuller, lawyer/ Congressman
1814-35	Tutored by father. Attended Cambridge Port Private Grammar School, Dr. Park’s Boston Lyceum, Miss Prescott’s Seminary, Groton, MA. Returning home at 14, Fuller scheduled rigid self-education, avidly read classics. Studied German; read/translated Tasso by Goethe. Published articles in Boston periodical. When family moved to farm in Groton, MA, she home-schooled younger brothers and sister.  Unexpectedly her father died.  She was burdened with helping support her family by teaching, which thwarted in her dream of writing a biography on Goethe.
1836	Met Ralph Waldo Emerson, who became influential friend and introduced her into circle of Transcendentalists. Taught young children at Bronson Alcott’s innovative Boston Temple school.
1839	Launched paid “Conversations,” educational discussions to help women develop confidence and capabilities comparable to Harvard graduates, held at Elizabeth Peabody’s West Street Bookstore, Boston, MA. Published Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of His Life, translated from the German book by Eckermann (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, 1839.)
1840-43	Appointed by Emerson to become first editor, The Dial magazine, quarterly “voice” of Transcendentalism. Organized layout, solicited/edited/wrote articles; held editorial chair until 1842. Her essay Goethe introduced his work to Americans. Essay on critics laid groundwork for stature as one of America’s first truly fine literary critics. Radical essay on women, “The Great Lawsuit: Man vs. Men. Woman vs. Women,” paved her later expansion into a book on woman’s equality (The Dial, 4 - July, 1843, pp. 1-47). Became first woman to enter Harvard library (Gore Hall), to research book, Summer on the Lakes, (Boston: Charles C. Little & James Brown, 1843), about travels to Great Lakes area of Chicago/Milwaukee, at that time the frontier of American Northwest.
1845	Horace Greeley published her book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, first American book-length treatment on women’s relationships and equality, covering economic and social barriers, prostitution, homosexuality, hypocrisy, and calling on women to develop confidence and manifest their true potential. (New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1845.) Her ideas caused public sensation and she became reputed as a controversial celebrity throughout English-speaking world.  Moving to New York City at behest of Greeley, she became first woman journalist of his big city daily with national circulation, The New York Daily Tribune.  She developed the literature and culture department, set standards for criticism, called on American writers for fresh original American literature emanating from the heart. As journalist she covered poverty, wrote exposes of city institutions, and advocated social reform including half-way house for released women prisoners.
1846	Became first woman foreign correspondent; traveled Europe and covered conditions of poverty, coal miners, and the common worker. Met the exiled Italian revolutionary Joseph Mazzini as well as Thomas Carlyle, George Sand, Thomas de Quincy, William Wordsworth and many other literati. Published Papers on Literature and Art (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1846), a collection of Dial/Tribune articles.
1847-49	Landing in Italy she formed a liaison in Rome with Marchese Giovanni Angelo Ossoli, a Roman nobleman. Both were involved in Italian politics of revolutionary ferment. She regularly reported on the events of the Revolution of 1848-49. She sent dispatches to the New YorkTribune and called for American intervention and help. As events culminated in war throughout the streets and hills of Rome, she became first female war correspondent to serve under combat conditions and set a precedent for eye-witness war reportage. Meanwhile, Ossoli joined the Civic Guard and later became captain of a brigade that fought on the Vatican walls and other strategic points. At the same time, a wealthy friend appointed Fuller to direct the Hospital Fatebenefratelli, set up on Tiber Island to receive the war wounded. During the crisis, Fuller and Ossoli were probably married, secretly due to Ossoli’s inheritance problems. No marriage certificate can today be located. Fuller gave birth to a son in Rieti, a small village northeast of Rome. After the defeat, they fled to Florence where they lived peacefully in the American sector, and Fuller began a history of Italian Revolution.
1850	Departed for America on merchant ship with Ossoli and two year-old son, May 17. On July 19 gale winds caused a tremendous storm. Ship struck sand bar off the shores of Fire Island, New York, broke apart, and sank. The Ossolis drowned. Her history of Italian Revolution was never found. Her baby buried is in Fuller family plot at Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA; monument later erected to commemorate Margaret Fuller.

RECOMMENDED READING

• Chevigny, Bell Gale. The Woman and the Myth: Margaret Fuller’sLife and Writings. New York: Feminist Press, 1976.
• James, Laurie. Men, Women and Margaret Fuller. New York: Golden Heritage Press, Inc., 1990. The truth that existed between Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson and their circle of Transcendental friends.
• James, Laurie, Why Margaret Fuller Is Forgotten. New York: Golden Heritage Press, Inc., 1988. A True Account – typical of how famous women have been buried in history.
• Von Mehren, Joan. Minerva and the Muse: A Life of Margaret Fuller. University of Massachusetts Press, 1995.

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