Fanny
Wright
was born in Dundee on 6th September, 1795.
Both her father, a wealthy Scottish linin manufacturer,
and her mother died by the time she was three years old. Wright was
brought up in the homes of relatives, including James
Milne, a member of Scottish school of progressive philosophers. Milne,
who encouraged Fanny to question conventional ideas, was to have a
lasting influence on her political development.
Wright
visited the USA in 1818 and after returning to England published her
observations of the country in her book, Views
of Society and Manners in America
(1821). The book praised America's experiments in democracy and provided
information for those radicals in Britain involved in the struggle
for parliamentary reform.
In England she became friendly with the Marquis
de Lafayette and together they returned to the United States
in 1824. Later that year Wright visited New Harmony in Indiana, the
socialist community established by Robert
Owen and his son Robert
Dale Owen. She was immediately converted to Owenism and
decided to form her own co-operative community.
In 1825 Wright purchased 2,000 acres of woodland thirteen miles from
Memphis in Tennessee and formed a community called Nashoba. Wright
then bought slaves from neighbouring farmers, freed them, and gave
them land on her settlement.
Some aspects of Wright's community were extremely controversial, especially
her decision to encourage sexual freedom. She came to believe that
miscegenation was the ultimate solution of the racial question. Wright
saw marriage as a discriminatory institution and started advocating
free love.
Wright also developed her own dress code for women. This included
bodices, ankle-length pantaloons
and a dress cut to above the knee. This style was later promoted by
feminists such as Amelia Bloomer,
Susan
Anthony and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton.
Wright spent her entire personal fortune on her Nashoba co-operative
community. She hoped it would become economically self-sufficient
but this did not happen and in 1828 she was forced to abandon her
experiment. Wright and Robert
Dale Owen arranged for the former slaves to be sent to
the black republic of Haiti.
In 1829 Wright settled in New York where she published her book, Course
of Popular Lectures. She also combined with Robert
Dale Owen to publish the Free
Enquirer. In the journal Wright advocated socialism,
the abolition of slavery, universal
suffrage, free secular education, birth control, changes in the
marriage and divorce laws. Wright and Owen also became involved in
the radical Workingmen's
Party while
living in New York.
Wright married the French doctor, Guillaume
P. Darusmont in 1831. The marriage was not a success and ended in
divorce. As her husband, Darusmont had managed to gain control
over her entire property, including her earnings from lectures and
the royalties from her books. Fanny Wright was
in the middle of a legal struggle with Darusmont, when she
died on 13th December, 1852. As requested, her tombstone in Cincinnati
was inscribed with the words: "I
have wedded the cause of human improvement, staked on it my fortune,
my reputation and my life."
(1) Fanny Wright, Course
of Popular Lectures (1829)
However novel it may appear, I shall venture
the assertion, that, until women assume the place in society which
good sense and good feeling alike, assign to them, human improvement
must advance but feebly. It is in vain that we would circumscribe
the power of one half of our race, and that half by far the most important
and influential. If they exert it not for good, they will for evil;
if they advance not knowledge, they will perpetuate ignorance. Let
women stand where they may in the scale of improvement, their position
decides that of the race. Are they cultivated? - so is society polished
and enlightened. Are they ignorant? - so is it gross and insipid.
Are they wise? - so is the human condition prosperous. Are they foolish?
- so is it unstable and unpromising. Are they free? - so is the human
character elevated. Are they enslaved? - so is the whole race degraded.
Oh! that we could learn the advantage of just practice and consistent
principles!
Your political institutions have taken equality for their
basis; your declaration of rights, upon which your institutions rest,
sets forth this principle as vital and inviolate. Equality is the
soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it.
How are men to be secured
in any rights without instruction; how to be secured in the equal
exercise of those rights without equality of instruction? By instruction
understand me to mean knowledge - just knowledge; not talent, not
genius, not inventive mental powers. These will vary in every human
being; but knowledge is the same for every mind, and every mind may
and ought to be trained to receive it. If then, ye have pledged, at
each anniversary of your political independence, your lives, properties,
and honor, to the securing of your common liberties, ye have pledged
your lives, properties, and honor, to the securing of your
common instruction.
All men are born free
and equal! That is: our moral feelings acknowledge it to be just and
proper, that we respect those liberties in others, which we lay claim
to for ourselves; and that we permit the free agency of every individual,
to any extent which violates not the free agency of his fellow creatures.
There is but one honest
limit to the rights of a sentient being; it is where they touch the
rights of another sentient being. Do we exert our own liberties without
injury to others - we exert them justly; do we exert them at the expense
of others - unjustly. And, in thus doing, we step from the
sure platform of liberty upon the uncertain threshold of tyranny.
Who among us but has had
occasion to remark the ill-judged, however well-intentioned government
of children by their teachers; and, yet more especially, by their
parents? In what does this mismanagement originate? In a misconception
of the relative position of the parent or guardian, and of the child;
in a departure, by the parent from the principle of liberty, in his
assumption of rights destructive of those of the child; in his exercise
of authority, as by right divine, over the judgment, actions, and
person of the child; in
his forgetfulness of the character of the child, as a human being,
born "free and equal" among his compeers; that is, having
equal claims to the exercise and development of all his
senses, faculties, and powers, with those who brought him
into existence, and with all sentient beings who tread the
earth. Were a child thus viewed by his parent, we should
not see him, by turns, made a plaything and a slave; we
should not see him commanded to believe, but encouraged
to reason; we should not see him trembling under the rod,
nor shrinking from a frown, but reading the wishes of others
in the eye, gathering knowledge wherever he threw his
glance, rejoicing in the present hour, and treasuring up sources
of enjoyment for future years.
What, then, has the parent
to do, if he would conscientiously discharge that most sacred of all
duties, that, weightiest of all responsibilities, which ever did or
ever will devolve on a human being? He is to encourage in his child
a spirit of inquiry, and equally to encourage it in himself. He is
never to advance an opinion without showing the facts upon which it
is grounded; he is never to assert a fact, without proving it to be
a fact. He is not to teach a code of morals, any more than a creed
of doctrines; but he is to direct his young charge to observe the
consequences of actions on himself and on others; and to judge of
the propriety of those actions by their ascertained consequences.
He is not to command his feelings any more than his opinions or his
actions; but he is to assist him in the analysis of his feelings,
in the examination of their nature, their tendencies, their effects.
Let him do this, and have no anxiety for the result.
Who, then, shall say,
inquiry is good for him and not good for his children? Who shall cast
error from himself, and allow it to be grafted on the minds he has
called into being? We see men who will aid the instruction of their
sons and condemn only their daughters to ignorance. "Our sons",
they say, "will have to exercise political rights, may aspire
to public offices, may fill some learned profession, may struggle
for wealth and acquire it. It is well that we give
them a helping hand; that we assist them to such knowledge as is going,
and make them as sharp witted as their neighbours. But for our daughters,"
they say - if indeed respecting them they say any thing - "for
our daughters, little trouble or expense is necessary. They can never
be any thing; in fact, they are nothing. We had best give them up
to their mothers, who may take them to Sunday's preaching; and with
the aid of a little music, a little dancing, and a few fine gowns,
and fit them out for the market of marriage."
(2) John Humphrey Noyes, History
of American Socialism (1870)
Frances Wright, little known to the present generation, was really
the spiritual helpmate and better half of the Owens, in the socialistic
revival of 1826. Our impression is, not only that she was the leading
woman in the communistic movement of that period, but that she had
a very important agency in starting two other movements that had far
greater success and are at this moment in popular favour: anti-slavery
and woman's rights.
(3) Ernestine L. Rose, speech
at the National Woman's Rights Convention (1858)
Frances Wright was the first woman in this country who spoke on the
equality of the sexes. She had indeed a hard task before her. The
elements were entirely unprepared. She had to break up the time-hardened
soil of conservatism, and her reward was sure - the same reward that
is always bestowed upon those who are in the vanguard of any great
movement. She was subjected to public odium, slander, and persecution.
But these were not the only things she received. Oh, she had her reward
- that reward of which no enemies could deprive her, which no slanders
could make less precious - the eternal reward of knowing that she
had done her duty.
(4)
Paulina Davis, speech on Fanny Wright at a meeting of the National
Woman Suffrage Association (19th October, 1870)
To
this heroic woman, who left ease, elegance, a high social circle of
rich culture, and with true self-abnegation gave her life, in the
country of her adoption, to the teachings of her highest idea of truth,
it is fitting that we pay a tribute of just, though late, respect.
Her writings are of the purest and noblest character, and whatever
there is of error in them is easily thrown aside. The spider sucks
poison from the same flower from which the bee gathers honey; let
us therefore ask if the evil be not in ourselves before we condemn
others. Women joined in the hue and cry against her, little thinking
that men were building the gallows and making them the executioners.
Women have crucified in all ages the redeemers of their own sex, and
men mock them with the fact.
(5) Robert Dale Owen writing
about Fanny Wright after her death.
She was thoroughly versed in
the literature of the day, was well informed on general topics, and
spoke French and Italian fluently. She had travelled and resided for
years in Europe, was an intimate friend of General Lafayette, and
made the acquaintance of many leading reformers, Hungarian, Polish,
and others, and was a thorough republican; indeed, an advocate of
universal suffrage without regard to colour or sex.
(6)
Fanny Wright, tombstone in Cincinnati (1852)
I
have wedded the cause of human improvement, staked on it my fortune,
my reputation and my life.
Last updated: 7th May, 2002
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