Margaret Fuller
(Sarah) Margaret Fuller (May 23, 1810 - June 19, 1850) was a teacher, author, editor, critc, and women's rights activist whose contributions to literature and mid-nineteenth century reform movements were significant and ingenious.
Childhood
Margaret Fuller was the first born to Margarett Crane and Timothy Fuller, Jr. in Cambridge, Massachusetts on May 23, 1810. Margaret's mother was raised in a Unitarian family in the small town of Canton,Massachusetts. Margaret's father was a very gifted and learned man who attended Harvard University. While there he traded his Calvanistic upbringing for the Unitarian religon and views. Timothy was a devout man and followed the Unitarian rationalism faithfully throughout his life. He often questioned and reasoned and challenged the religious leaders of the time, but he never deviated from his new-found faith. Timothy and his wife established themselves with the Cambridgeport Parish Unitarian Church where he served on the church council for some time.
Timothy and Margaret began their family and also a life in politics. Timothy, who was an accomplished lawyer and a member of the Republican party, was elected to the Massachussetts Senate in 1813, just three years after his first child was born. He served in the senate for a total of four terms. After his long service with the United States Congress, he had had his fill of politics and decided to retire and focus on his first love, that of writing. Margarett often went unnoticed behind her husbands prominent political life. She was a diligent wife, but she also maintained her individualism. She was vibrant and vivacious, and an avid reader who possessed great intelligence. She was an affectionate mother and was definately the softer of the two in terms of discipline and education.
Education
As Margaret was the fitst born, her father, who had desperately wanted a son to teach and educate, decided he would put just as much effort into educating his daughter, a deviation from the norm in those days. Thus, at a very young age Margaret underwent a bootcamp type of training and education. She became fluent in German and Latin and well-versed in other languages. She was forced to read for hours at a time. Soon a younger sister was born into the family, but she passed away, and again, Margaret remained the focal point of her father's efforts. In all, Timothy and Margarett were blessed with eight children, with six living into adulthood. Margaret, always a writer, kept journals at the time. In one she recorded thoughts about her education, "I was put at once under discipline of considerable severity, and, at the same time, had a more than ordinarily high standard presented to me." Often her feelings were expressed in the form of intense nightmares and insomnia. The education was harrowing, but Margaret excelled at all subjects, including English grammar, mathematics, languages, music, history, and science. Ovbiously, for a child so young, Margaret was afflicted with a great deal of stress from her father's semi-fanatical expectations. Little would her father expect that Margaret would exchange her health for her education. For the rest of her adult life she suffered severely from migrane headaches caused by intense reading in low-light, as well as extremely poor eyesight.
Margaret's mother felt the need to fine tune her education by sending her to various schools to learn feminine propriety and manners, as well as the art of interacting with other children her age. Thus from the ages of nine to twenty-five, Margaret was sent to various educational establishments including: Cambridge Port Private Grammar School,Dr. Park's Boston Lyceum, and Miss Prescott's Young Women's Seminary. Margaret desperately disliked this period of her life. She was so advanced in her education that the classes often bored her and the other students thought her aloof and audacious. In reality, she was very shy and awkward socially and very superior and advanced mentally. Thus she suffered from a great deal of contempt and mockery. Margaret finally decided to end her education and begin educating others. She was a natural teacher who began by helping her family and serving as a type of governess/tutor to her younger brothers and sisters. Her father, quiet in the public eye, was not as available for his younger children's educations, but felt confident that he had trained Margaret well enough to do the job right.
Social Life
At this time, Margaret also began to form a circle of friends who delighted in her mind, her wit, and her ability to carry on a conversation in many realms. Among these friends were James Freeman Clarke, Frederic Henry Hedge, and William Henry Channing. However, he closest acquainance was that of Lydia Maria Francis. Margaret and Maria, as she was called, would read endlessly and discuss what they read for days on end. They read all the great writers of the time. Even with this small circle of educational friends, Margaret still felt she lacked accomplishement and polish in a social decorum and civility.
Margaret was not the only one who noticed her short-comings, and accomplished and beautiful Eliza Farrar, wife of John Farrar, a Harvard professor, took Margaret under her wing. It was through Eliza Farrar that Margaret learned to dress and interact and learn to feel comfortable in her own skin. It was also through the Farrars that Margaret was introduced to Ralph Waldo Emerson. The became good friends, although Emerson thought her a bit annoying at first, he complained of the nasal quality to her voice and her apparent plainess. But, Margaret simply had to open her mouth and have a conversation with him, to make Emerson delighted and requesting her company often. Thus, Margaret traveled to Concord, Massachussets often to visit with the Emerson family, she even assissted Emerson with learning German, although she claimed that he didn't have much talent for it. It was here that she also became acquainted with Bronson Alcott, father of Louisa May Alcott and the movement known as Transcendentalism. Margaret's life seemed perfect to her. She was making friends, enjoying lively conversation, and planning on a trip to Europe with Eliza. Shortly before the party was to depart to Europe, Margaret's father became very ill and unexpectedly died in 1835. Timothy left behind his widow and six children without any savings or other financial aid. Thus, it befell Margaret, being the eldest, to try and find some means of supporting her family.
Professional Life
Margaret, who was 26 at this time, was hired by her new-found friend, Bronson Alcott, to be a teacher. Bronson was delighted with her education, her quick wit, and her desire to teach. He hired her immediately to teach at the Temple School he had just opened in Boston. However, his methods proved to be very controversial and the school closed after a short time. From 1837 to 1839 Margaret traveled to Providence, Rhode Island for a teaching job and sent much of her earnings home to her mother. Soon she returned to her family farm, packed them up and moved them to a rented home five miles outside of Boston. Margaret traveled into the city each day and held what came to be called "conversations" with a group of intellectuals who wanted a chance to talk and express what they were learning. This group of women was well-educated, ambitious, and deviceful. But the education provided for women at the time lacked the gatherings and conversations to discuss what they were learning that the men seemed to enjoy and benefit from. Thus, these "converstaions" were born and attended by Lidian Emerson, Sarah Bradford Ripley, Abigail Allyn Francis, Lydia Maria Francis Child (her long-time friend), Elizabeth Hoar, Eliza Farrar, Mary Channing, Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia Peabody, Sophia Dana Ripley and Lydia (Mrs. Theodore) Parker.
She edited the transcendentalist journal, The Dial for the first two years of its existence from 1840 to 1842. When she joined Horace Greeley's New York Tribune as literary critic in 1844, she became the first female journalist to work on the staff of a major newspaper.
In the mid-1840s she organized discussion groups of women in which a variety of subjects, such as art, education and women's rights, were debated. A number of significant figures in the women's rights movement attended these "conversations". Ideas brought up in these discussions were developed in Fuller's major work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), which argues for the independence of women.
Life Abroad
She was sent to Europe by the New York Tribune as a foreign correspondent, and there interviewed many prominent writers including George Sand and Thomas Carlyle—whom she found disappointing, due to his reactionary politics amongst other things. In Italy she met the Italian revolutionary Giovanni Ossoli, marrying in 1847; she later had a son by him. The couple supported Giuseppe Mazzini's revolution for the establishment of a Roman Republic in 1849 - he fought in the struggle while she volunteered to work in a supporting hospital.
Death
Fuller, her husband, and her son all died when a boat transporting them back to America from Italy sank off Fire Island, New York. Henry David Thoreau traveled to New York in an effort to recover her body and writings, but neither were found. Among the articles lost was Fuller's manuscript on the history of the Roman Republic. Many of her writings were collected together by her brother Arthur as At Home and Abroad (1856) and Life Without and Life Within (1858). Her memorial is in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
External links
- Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House, nonprofit that works to strengthen and empower families through social and educational programs
- Works by Margaret Fuller. Project Gutenberg
- Summer On The Lakes, in 1843
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