Margaret
Fuller was
born in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, 23rd May, 1810. Her father was
Timothy Fuller, a Republican
Party member of Congress. Margaret was educated by her father,
before attending the local school when she reached the age of fourteen.
After the death of her father from cholera
in October, 1835 she supported her mother and her brothers and sisters
by teaching in Boston (1836-37) and Providence
(1837-39).
In 1840 Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson
established the progressive journal, The
Dial. For the next two years she edited the journal and in
one article, The Great Lawsuit,
she called for sexual equality.
In 1844 she published a study of frontier life in Illinois and Wisconsin,
Summer on the Lakes. Later that
year Fuller was recruited by Horace Greeley
to write for the New York Tribune.
In the newspaper Fuller wrote about modern literature and advocated
social reforms. Greeley later described Fuller as "the most remarkable
and in some respects the greatest woman whom America has yet known".
Fuller also wrote feminist tract, Women in
the Nineteenth Century (1845). The book's theme was that
women must fulfill themselves as individuals and not as subordinates
to men. She wrote that "when inward and outward freedom for woman
as much as for man shall be acknowledged as a right, not yielded as
a concession." Fuller's writings on political equality influenced
a generation of feminists involved in the struggle for women's
suffrage. This included Susan B. Anthony,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Olympia
Brown, Lucretia Mott and Lucy
Stone.
In 1846 Fuller became the first American woman to become a foreign
correspondent and reported for the New
York Tribune from Britain, France and Italy. While in Europe
she married the Italian freedom fighter, Angelo Ossoli. Fuller now
began advocating socialist views and during
the Revolution of 1848 assumed charge of a hospital in Rome while
her husband took part in the fighting. The city fell in 1850 and the
couple were forced to flee.
In May, 1850, Fuller, Ossoli, and their young son sailed for America.
All three died when their ship was wrecked in a storm off New
York on 19th July, 1850.
(1)
Margaret Fuller, Women in the Nineteenth Century (1845)
We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every
path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man.
Were this done, and a slight temporary fermentation allowed to subside,
we should see crystallizations more pure and of more various beauty.
We believe the divine energy would pervade nature to a degree unknown
in the history of former ages, and that no discordant collision, but
a ravishing harmony of the spheres, would ensue.
Yet, then and only then
will mankind be ripe for this, when inward and outward freedom for
Woman as much as for Man
shall be acknowledged as a right, not yielded as a concession. As
the friend of the Negro assumes that one man cannot by right hold
another in bondage, so should the friend of Woman assume that Man
cannot by right lay even well meant restrictions on Woman. If the
Negro be a soul, if the woman be a soul, apparelled in flesh, to one
Master only are they accountable. There is but one law for souls,
and, if there is to be an interpreter of it, he must come not as man,
or son of man, but as son of God.
Were thought and feeling
once so far elevated that Man should esteem himself the brother and
friend, but nowise the lord and tutor, of Woman, - were he really
bound with her in equal worship, - arrangements as to function and
employment would be of no consequence. What woman needs is not as
a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to
discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded, to unfold such powers
as were given her when we left
our common home. If fewer talents were given her, yet if allowed the
free and full employment of these, so that she may render back to
the giver his own with usury, she will not complain; nay, I dare to
say she will bless and rejoice in her earthly birthplace, her earthly
lot.
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