Margaret Fuller’s intellect was recognized by Ralph Waldo Emerson as being equivalent to the intelligence of a man. Therefore, it can be said that she paved the way for women to aspire to achieve success. Margaret Fuller already had her odds against her because she was a woman, but she became a literary scholar and icon for woman to strive for greatness despite her adversity. She was responsible for the upbringing of her siblings when her father was away serving for four terms in Congress. In a letter to Margaret, he wrote, “To exceed in all things should be your constant aim; mediocrity is obscurity.” Along with the pressure of a strictly regimented education and the home schooling of her siblings, she was near sighted and suffered from depression. In the year 1833, Margaret Fuller, and her father moved to Gronton where she took her place as a “farm” scholar. She thought of this as an “exile” which she resented because she felt as though her experience took away from her vast spectrum of knowledge. One can only imagine what it is like to suffer migraine headaches brought on by depression and at the same time be expected to exceed the expectations mapped out for your life.

Margaret Fuller’s father, Timothy, was a keen influence in her life who shaped her as an intellectual woman of prestige. One might ask why her father would go against a conformist society and build his daughter’s hopes for a dream which she may not have been able to obtain. Some may also wonder why Timothy Fuller raised her as if she were a boy. He was her teacher and life coach. Timothy Fuller was a prestigious lawyer who followed in the footsteps of his uncle to become a congressman. One could argue that a strong religious background and his diligence to stand up for his beliefs influenced Margaret Fuller to model his rigid behavior. Her father was against the Missouri Compromise. He was also a self proclaimed abolitionist. During the Seneca Falls Women’s Convention of New York in 1848, Margaret Fuller with her father’s spirit took before the pulpit as an abolitionist and a crusader of all women. She proclaimed, “If the Negro be a soul, if the woman be a soul, appareled in flesh to one Master only are they accountable. There is but one law for souls, and there is an interpreter of it, he must not come as the son of man, but the son of God.” (Fuller, 16) She emulated self-sufficiency and common sense, while showing strong compassion for others. In the year 1835, when Timothy Fuller died, Margaret Fuller was left to manage the finances, to undertake the care of her siblings, and to uphold her domestic duties. Margaret Fuller was resentful when her father died because she felt as though she had been left alone. Despite the emotional despair her fathers death caused her , her admiration for the life he led grew. As a result of her vigorous education she wrote, “Children should not through books ante-date their actual experiences.” This “strong gentian woman,” as thought by Waldo Emerson, thought herself to be “bright and ugly.” In her book, Woman of the Nineteenth Century she wrote about her meeting with Ben Jonson who found her intellect to be her far better trait. She was the influential woman for one of his poetry pieces.

“I meant the day-star should not be brighter ride

Nor shed like influence from its lucent seat;

I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet

Free from the solemn vice of greatness, pride;

I meant each softest virtue there should meet,

Fit in that softer bosom to abide,

Only a learned and manly soul,

I purposed her, that should with even powers,

The rock, the spindle, and the shears control

Of destiny , and to spin her own free hours.”

As a proud abolitionist and feminists, her book Woman of the Nineteenth Century, speaks out against the degradation and the slavery of women. She wrote, “Tremble not before the free man, but the slave who has chains to break. In slavery, acknowledged slavery, women are on a par with men. Each is a work tool, an article of property, no more! In perfect freedom, such as painted in Olympus, in Swedenborg’s angelic state, in the heaven where there is no marrying or giving marriage, each is a purified intelligence, an enfranchised soul no less.” She also wrote that she felt that in comparison to men in Germany, America does not yet know how to properly treat women. She wrote, “Germany did not need to learn a high view of women; it was inborn in that race.” (Fuller, 30)

Margaret Fuller continues her thought by saying that Christian men emulate the way that women are treated whether it be good or bad in accordance with the Bible and its virtues. She wrote, “Woman was to the Teuton warrior his priestess, his friend, his sister, his truth, a wife. And the Christian statues of the noble pairs, as they lie above their graves in stone, expressing the meaning of all the bygone pilgrimage by hands folded in mutual prayer, yield not a nobler sense of the place and the powers of a woman, than belonged to the altvater day. (28, Fuller).

When Ben Jonson wrote about Margaret Fuller, he said, “Where ever she has herself arisen in private history, and nobly shone forth in any form of excellence, men have received her, not only willingly, but with triumph. Their encomiums indeed, are always, in some sense, mortifying; they show too much surprise. ‘Can this be you?’, he cries to the transfigured Cinderella; well I should have never thought it but I am very glad. We will tell everyone that you have surpassed your sex.”

In response to his comment, she told him, “But not only is man vain and fond of power, but the same want of development, which thus affects him morally, prevents his intellectually discerning the destiny of women. The boy wants no woman, but only a girl to play ball with him, and mark his handkerchief.” (Fuller, 19)

Margaret Fuller became a teacher at the Bronson Alcott Temple School for women and the Green Street School in Providence, Rhode Island. She was a revolutionary figure for women because it was illegal to teach women oral communication skills and to give them the insight to philosophize current situations in politics, the work place, and the home. The Alcott School was a controversial place to learn at because the students were taught about integration and the social acceptance of others. She wanted women to become independent, creative thinkers.

Among the literary writers she taught who attended her lectures were Lydia Marie Child, Elizabeth and Sophia Peabody, and Ellen and Caroline Sturgis. An anonymous critic of Margaret Fuller said in a conversation with her, “Is it not enough, cries the irritated traitor that you have done all you could to break up the national union, and thus destroy the prosperity of our country, but now you must be trying to break up family union, to take my wife away from the cradle and the kitchen hearth to vote at polls, and preach from a pulpit. Of course, if she does such things, she cannot attend to those of her own sphere. She is happy enough as she is. She has more leisure than I have every means of improvement, every indulgence.” ( Fuller, 11) She responds angrily to the critic, saying, “ God grant you play true to another then. I am grateful that you did not say that she was only the hand. If the head represses no natural pulse of the heart there can be no question as to giving your consent . Both will be of one accord, and there needs but to present any question to get a full and true answer. There is no need of precaution, of indulgence, or consent. But our doubt is whether the heart does consent with the head, or only obeys its passion which precludes the exercise of its natural powers, or a repugnance that turns sweet qualities to bitter or a doubt that lays waste the fair occasions of life. It is to ascertain the truth, that we purpose liberating measures. (Fuller, 10,11) In this way, Margaret Fuller is showing that the head controls intelligence, the heart controls love, and that the two at times should be separated if women are to be treated as equals to men.

On Christmas day of 1944, Margaret Fuller spent a day at a women’s prison in New York, because she believed that women of all backgrounds should be aware of the spiritual and intellectual rewards that could arise from the well roundedness that a good education could offer. It was at the women’s prison that she taught them how to self-substantiate themselves in society upon their re-entrance to leading civilized lives. In one of her lectures, as a point to restore self -confidence in the women she said, “Let no one dare to call another man mad who is not willing to rank in the same class for every perversion and fault of judgment who is not willing to suffer the penalty due to his own offenses.”

The first issue of The Dial was published in July of 1840. The Dial was founded by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller after the Bronson Alcott Temple School went bankrupt. Margaret Fuller served as the editor of The Dial for two years. She did not focus on religion as much as literature because Unitarian ministers were not unified and were not willing to publish religious articles under one masthead. Margaret Fuller featured four sketches of women modeling feminine power and maternal strength. Her intentions were to bring out creativity in women and empower them to become enlightened thinkers who could substantiate themselves as equals to men. In he literary journal, The Dial, she wrote, “Men disappoint me so. I am weary of the playground of boys! I wish I were a man and there should be one. I love best to be a woman, but at present womanhood is too straitly bond to give me scope. At hours I truly live as a woman, at other times I stifle…Despite as a gamester I feel at moments, yet I cling to the faith that God cannot lose his great throw of man.” (16, Deiss) In the year 1837, Margaret Fuller attended Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Phi Beta Kappa Society address at Harvard University. It was there that she was inducted into the Transcendentalist movement. She was also recognized as an equal by men of the same intellect as she and the free thinkers of society. In the year 1842, her Conversation Woman inspired Ralph Waldo Emerson’s admiration towards her rebellious spirit and her independent nature. He wrote, “She rose before me at times into heroical and godlike regions, and I could remember no superior woman, but through Ceres, Minerva, Proserpine.” (The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson) Two years later, she published translations of Johann Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe, and German poetry. In the year 1840, Brook Farms was founded by George Ripley of West Roxbury. Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Peabody were the only women to become members of the Transcendentalist Society. Although she did not live there, her brother did and it was said that she was a frequent visitor. Margaret Fuller took an interest in the utopian way of life in this Transcendentalist community. It was at Brook Farms that she befriended Nathaniel Hawthorne. She became his influence for the character Zenobia in his book The Blithedale Romance. From the year 1839 to 1844, Margaret Fuller was very active. She held lectures geared towards women that stressed the seriousness of women becoming educated and gaining prominence in society for their intellects and their opinions rather than the traditional roles that women were expected to fulfill in society. In the year 1843, her Conversations inspired Margaret Fuller’s subject matter for her article, “The Great Lawsuit, Man versus men, Woman versus Women.” The city of Chicago was the influence for her book, Summer on the Lakes. Margaret Fuller’s book Summer on the Lakes was released to the public in the year 1844. Horace Greeley was so intrigued by her writing that he asked her to be the editor for The New York Tribune.

Margaret Fuller was an icon to many literary scholars. Although she and Edgar Allan Poe often had different opinions about the subject material that made for scholarly literature she lacked much to be desired in what he believed a woman should be. She criticized Poe as a tale teller and poet as a result of Poe criticizing the works published by her brother in-law Ellery Channing. Poe criticized Channing by saying, “We were to quote specimens under the general head of “utter and redeemable nonsense”, we should quote nine tenths of this book . Indeed, wrote Poe the main mistake of the poems was “that of having been printed at all.” (313, Myerson) In light of Fuller and Poe being critical of each other, she says that she can make an effort to respect him if he is indeed sincere. She believed his declarations to be true, and felt no need to doubt the subject matter he wrote about since she did not feel the need to prove it otherwise. She believed that unless Poe himself disproved what she wrote, than there was no need for further mutual scrutiny of each other’s works. Poe said,” In defiance of my own taste, it is incumbent upon me to say that I think nothing in this volume is much value to the public or very credible to myself. Events not to be controlled have prevented me from making at any time, any serious effort in what, under happier circumstances, would have been the field of my choice.”

Her response to Poe’s feelings is one of respect and belief. “We believe Mr. Poe to be sincere in this declaration; if he is, we respect him; if otherwise, we do not. Such things should never be said unless they are said in hearty earnest. If in earnest they are honorable pledges; if not a pitiful fence and foil of vanity. Earnest or not, the words are thus far true: the productions in this volume indicate a power to do something far better. With the exception of The Raven, which seems intended chiefly to show the writer’s artistic skill, and is in it’s own way a rare and finished specimen, they are all fragments-fyttes upon the lyre, almost all of which leave us something to desire and demand.” Margaret Fuller is strongly critical of Poe’s works because she believes that when Poe writes his poems to center around beauty, his ability to separate intellect and the principles of vanity does not do justice to the ideal that a characteristic of a woman’s beauty can be her mind.

Margaret Fuller supported Nathaniel Hawthorne’s marriage to Sophia Peabody because she believed that Hawthorne had the proper balance of feminine and masculine traits. She also believed that his marriage to her would be an intellectual friendship. She wrote in a letter to Sophia Peabody congratulating her, “If I ever saw a man who combined great tenderness to understand the heart of a woman, with quiet depth and manliness enough to satisfy her it is Mr. Hawthorne.” She defined “The Great Lawsuit” as her highest written form of marriage.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s criticism of her was due to the birth of her child Angelino whom she bore out of wedlock. As a way to target how she went against his standards which he had set of how women should act, he wrote in his journal, his newly formed opinion of her.

“There appears to have been a total collapse in poor Margaret, morally, and intellectually…There never was such a tragedy as her whole story; the sadder and sterner, because to much of the ridiculousness was mixed up in it, and because she could bear anything better than to be ridiculous. It was such an awful joke, that she should be resolved-in all sincerity, no doubt to make herself the greatest, wisest, best woman of the age, and to make that end, she set to work on her strange, heavy and, in many respects, defective and evil nature, and adorned it with a mosaic of admirable qualities such as she chose to possess…but she was not working an inanimate substance such as marble or clay; there was something within her that she could not possibly come at; to recreate and refine it, and by and by, this rude old potency bestirred itself, and undid all of her labor at the twinkling of an eye. On the whole, I do not know that I do not like her better for it,–the better because she proved herself a very woman, after all, and fell as the weakest of her sisters might.

Margaret Fuller faired a far better relationship with Ralph Waldo Emerson than she did with Nathaniel Hawthorne. Emerson did not share Nathaniel Hawthorne’s views that women should become independent thinkers. Hawthorne believed that women were structured different than men. He wrote, “I, such a frail state of body and mind so that women could fill the respected roles of their domestic sphere and that the man was structured in his intellectually gruff stature, so that women would have someone to be dependent on, and men would feel needed. He was a highly conventional anti-feminist. Margaret Fuller said of him that he simply could not conceive of a woman who did not need to be independent of a man.

In the book titled, Margaret Fuller: Essays on American Life and Letters, Margaret Fuller dedicates a chapter of her book to defining the flaws and triumphs of nineteenth century women. In light of women keeping with their sphere Margaret Fuller discussed her belief that one of the problems that the nineteenth century woman would have getting ahead is that she had already been taught by her mother of the domestic duties, how to raise a child, and how to find a suitable husband which she would be subservient to, therefore putting her intellect to the side to prepare herself for housewifery. She sarcastically wrote, “We cordially sympathize with these views.” Margaret Fuller also believed that a young lady could not have a proper education unless she was to learn math and science.

She wrote, “Much has been written about woman’s keeping within her sphere, which is defined as the domestic sphere. As a little girl she is to learn the lighter family duties, while she acquires that limited acquaintance with the realm of literature and science that will enable her to superintend the instruction of the children in their earliest years. It is not generally proposed that she should be sufficiently instructed and developed to understand the pursuits and aims of her future husband; she is not to be a helpmeet to him, in the way of companionship or counsel, except in the care of his house and children. Her youth is to be passed partly in learning to keep house and the use of the needle, partly in the social circle where her manners are to be formed, ornamental accomplishments perfected and displayed, and the husband found who shall give her the domestic sphere for which she is prepared.” (Myerson, 304) Margaret Fuller also believed that men and woman were capable of the same intellectual accomplishments despite the different physical characteristics that set them apart from each other.

The next few years produced radical changes in Fuller’s life. In the year 1845, Greeley and Tom McElrath published Woman of the Nineteenth Century. One year later, Margaret Fuller was asked to become a foreign correspondent for the New York Tribune. She accepted the position. When she traveled to London ,she met Giuseppi Mazzini, a prominent revolutionary figure who supported the unity of Italy. When she reacquainted with him in Rome, she was introduced to Marchese Giovanni Ossoli, with whom she became romantically involved. At a time when a women dating a younger man was unacceptable, she bore a son with her junior of ten years out of wedlock. She sent her son Angelino away to be cared for by a nurse, and it was said that she did not send him any money for his needs. She sent Angelino away so that she could remain close with her lover in Rome, where she worked as a nurse. (In the author’s note, Margaret Fuller is criticized for the choices she made as a mother)

In the year 1850, after the fall of Rome, Margaret Fuller and her lover decided to take the baby with them and get married before their return to America. However, the marriage of Giovanni and Margaret was only a rumor because it was unacceptable for a Roman Catholic to marry a Protestant. Upon their arrival to New York, The Elizabeth sank after the captain died of small pox. Unfortunately, the infant, Margaret Fuller, and her husband Ossoli drowned at sea.

“In a somewhat ironic aside to the sad event, it was partially due to Margaret Fuller’s insistence on self-reliance that, with her limited means, she couldn’t afford one of the more modern and presumably more sounder ships available at the time instead of the evidently frail merchantmen with its merchant hull, which took her and her family to an early grave.

Margaret Fuller was the youngest of eight children. She was born, May 23, 1810, to Margaret Crane and Timothy Fuller of Cambridgeport, Massachusetts. She was a child prodigy and the first of eight children to learn Latin and French at the age of six. By the age of eight she had already translated The Ovid. By the age of thirteen Margaret Fuller was able to translate the works of William Shakespeare. She also developed an interest in Greek philosophy. The primary focus of her Conversations was the usage of Socratic theories to enlighten women about the spiritual world and about Socrates’ views about the division of the sexes. Appropriately, Margaret Fuller’s book, Woman of the Nineteenth Century , displayed her feminist position and paved the way for her contributions to feminism.