## 1. Biography



Margaret Fuller was born in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, on 23 May
1810, the eldest child of Timothy Fuller and Margarett
Crane Fuller. (Cambridgeport is now part of Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and the Margaret Fuller House where she was born is
still standing.) Timothy Fuller was elected a Congressman from
Massachusetts in 1817 and served until 1825. He lavished upon his
eldest daughter a rigorous classical education usually reserved for
boys. He taught her how to read at age three and a half, and she
proved a child prodigy who rewarded Timothy's attention. Her
childhood curriculum included Latin prose, poetry, and composition,
supplemented by Greek writings that included the New Testament as well
as the classical philosophers, along with natural philosophy (natural
science) and the wide-ranging discipline then called moral philosophy,
which subsumed what we call the social sciences. When she was nine,
her father added *The Spectator*, *Paradise Lost*, and
Dr. Samuel Johnson to her reading list. Timothy's stern manner
and demanding requirements left young Margaret with emotional as well
as scholarly legacies: she became obsessive and self-critical. 



Formal schooling only began for Margaret in 1819; starting in 1824 she
boarded at the School for Young Ladies in Groton for two years, then
returned home. There she resumed her study of the classics. She found
the Greeks more congenial than the Romans, identifying the Greeks with
idealism, imagination, and freedom, the Romans with practicality,
logic, and stern composure. Her readings were supplemented now by the
Romantic literature taking shape in Europe, which she found
fascinating. By the time she was in her thirties, she could be
regarded as the best-read person, male or female, in New England
(Douglas 1977: 263). She ended up espousing an avowedly dual
philosophy that sought to embrace both classical and Romantic
outlooks. She taught that the Platonic tradition celebrated masculine
qualities while Romanticism celebrated feminine ones. Humanity as
whole needed both--and each individual person should cultivate
both their masculinity and their femininity.



Meanwhile, however, Timothy Fuller's political ambitions had not
been realized and his law practice shrank to the point where he
decided in 1833 to move to Groton, Massachusetts, and operate (like
many other Americans of the time) a family farm. The farm had not yet
begun to turn a profit, however, when Margaret's father died of
cholera in October, 1835. Timothy had not drawn up a will, and by the
male-oriented law of the time, title to the farm passed to his
brothers, leaving his widow and children living on the farm dependent
on the charity of Margaret's uncles. Margaret felt
understandably bitter, and though only in her twenties was forced to
assume responsibility for supporting her mother and young siblings.
She had begun work on a biography of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
having achieved fluency in German remarkably quickly, but gave up on
it, and the European trip it would have entailed, so she could teach
school full time and earn a salary. 



Margaret Fuller moved in highly literate circles, both before and
after her father's death. In 1839 she made use of her social
contacts when she commenced a series of discussion groups for women
that lasted five years; she referred to them as
"conversations". Most of these were held in the home of
her friend and fellow intellectual Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, who also
facilitated Fuller's publishing some pieces. Another friend,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, invited Fuller to edit a journal called *The
Dial*, an enterprise she undertook in 1840. Fuller was supposed to
receive a salary of $200 annually, but the money was never
paid--one of the reasons why she resigned after two years. She
continued to write for *The Dial* after no longer editing
it.



In 1844 Fuller moved to New York City and went to work for Horace
Greeley's famous newspaper, the *New York Tribune*, as a
full-time book reviewer. Where the *Dial* had a small and
declining circulation, the *Tribune* had 50,000 subscribers.
Over the next four years, Fuller wrote over 250 *Tribune*
articles on literature, music, and art as well as social and political
issues. She also published poetry during this period, though her
poetry has never received much attention. 



Starting in 1846, at her own initiative Fuller moved to Europe, first
to England and then to the Italian peninsula (Italy was not yet a
united country), where she served as a foreign correspondent for
Greeley. While still in England she met two Italians who would remain
prominent in her life: Giuseppi Mazzini, Italian patriot and
republican leader then in exile, and Giovanni Angelo Ossoli, whom she
eventually married, though it is unclear when or whether they
participated in a wedding ceremony. If such a ceremony did occur, it
was after the birth of their baby boy, Angelo Eugene Philip Ossoli,
nicknamed Angelino or Nino, on 5 September 1848 (Marshall 2013: 350).




When a Roman Republic was proclaimed in February 1849, the Ossolis
were living in the democratic Republic and supporting its cause, led
by Mazzini. The Republic sought to replace the Pope as temporal ruler
of Rome, while continuing his spiritual function. The Pope did not
acquiesce, and requested foreign aid to restore his power. France
provided it. In the war that followed, the Ossolis fought on behalf of
the Republic, he as a soldier and she as a nurse, but the French
prevailed, and the Ossolis fled into exile in Florence. 



In 1850 the couple decided to move to the United States, where
Margaret hoped to publish a book she had written on the short-lived
Roman Republic, even though Giovanni spoke no English. The family set
sail in May on a U.S. freighter named the *Elizabeth*, bound
for New York. During the voyage the captain died of smallpox, leaving
the first mate as acting captain. Under this inexperienced leadership,
the ship ran aground on a sandbar near Fire Island, NY, during a storm
at 3:30 a.m. on 19 July 1850. Since they were less than 300 yards from
shore, those who could swim jumped into the water--including the
acting captain. The Ossoli family could not swim, and were left
behind. A crowd formed on shore, but no one tried to rescue the
Ossolis. After 10 hours, a giant wave washed Margaret and her family
out to sea. Nino's tiny body was eventually found ashore;
neither of the adult Ossoli bodies ever was. The manuscript of
Margaret's book on the Roman Republic was among the items
lost.


## 2. Major Themes in Fuller's Philosophy


### 2.1 Unitarianism and the Cultivation of the Self



Central to both Margaret Fuller's theory and practice of life
was the cultivation of the self. The practice of
"self-improvement" or "self-culture" was very
widespread among middle-class white Americans of the time. Even
working-class men like Abraham Lincoln labored for self-improvement in
their individual character and talents as a pathway to security and
prosperity. Conscious development of one's own integrity and
abilities was regarded as a personal application of America's
proud white male democracy. The most admired and sophisticated
exponent of self-culture was the famous clergyman of the recently
emerged Unitarian religious denomination, William Ellery Channing
(1780-1842). Channing pioneered a form of Christian humanism.
Fuller regarded him as a heroic exemplar of her own ideal of
self-culture. Channing's project included both genders and all
races of human beings (Fuller 1845: 60).



Margaret Fuller was raised a Unitarian. The denomination originated in
early nineteenth-century New England in an intellectual rebellion by
descendants of the Puritans against Calvinist theology. The name
"Unitarian" reflected their repudiation of the
conventional Trinitarian Christian doctrine of a triune God of Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. The New England Unitarians ceased to regard
Jesus Christ as a unique divine personification of the Godhead.
Instead, they emphasized the potential divinity in everyone: every
good person should seek to create their own Christlike, even Godlike,
character. As Channing explained in his sermon entitled
"Likeness to God": "God becomes a real being to us
in proportion as his own nature is unfolded within us" (D. Howe
1970: 120; citing Channing 1828, in *Works*, III, 229).



Margaret Fuller's personal quest for own self-realization as
well as her ardent feminist program for the self-realization of all
women both took inspiration from Channing. Even though she abandoned
the Unitarian church and stopped attending any religious services,
Fuller never lost her admiration for Channing. Fuller set forth her
mature religious principles in "A Credo" around June 1840
(preserved in the Margaret Fuller Ossoli Collection, especially pp.
97-98, in the Boston Public Library). 



Fuller, Channing and many other American intellectuals of their time
based their conception of self-improvement on the faculty psychology
of the Scottish moral philosophers Thomas Reid, Lord Kames, and Dugald
Stewart. The word "faculty", like the word
"facility", is derived from the Latin word for
"power", and faculty psychology throughout ancient,
medieval, and modern times has been the study of human powers. The
conventional vision of human nature in Fuller's day was
hierarchical, with reason being rightly superior to the emotions.
Conscience was considered a rational power. Channing Unitarians
endorsed metaphysical dualism and sought to subordinate matter to mind
in the process of self-culture. A key issue for self-improvement was
subordinating "the passions" (including selfish, mercenary
motives) to reason, the divine quality in human nature. This version
of Christian humanism took academic shape in the moral philosophy
taught at Harvard during Fuller's lifetime (D. Howe 1988,
especially chap. 2, "The Moral Nature of Man"). Margaret
Fuller became the first woman granted library privileges at what was
then an all-male university.


### 2.2 Transcendentalism and Platonism



1835 was a year when the most influential persons in Margaret
Fuller's life changed: her father Timothy died, and she made the
acquaintance of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who became her friend and mentor.
Fuller's relationship with Emerson, like that with her father,
was full of tensions. The two had very discordant personalities, as
Judith Thurman has observed: "Waldo's cool, cerebral, and
ironic; Margaret's noisy, histrionic, and sincere"
(Thurman 2013: 79). Though their interactions were often tempestuous,
Emerson converted Fuller to his own version of self-improvement: the
quest for spiritual self-transcendence. Followers became known as
transcendentalists because they sought to transcend the material world
in communion with the divine. Fuller became a member of the
Transcendental Club founded by Emerson and Frederick Henry Hedge,
virtually all of whose members were Unitarians or former Unitarians.
The transcendentalists (including Thoreau, Theodore Parker, and
Elizabeth Peabody) are remembered today for their contributions to
American literature, philosophy, and social reform, the first
intellectual counter-culture in American history (see the entry on
 transcendentalism).
 At Emerson's invitation, Fuller edited the transcendental
periodical *The Dial* for two years (1840-42) and
continued to write for it afterwards. 



The transcendentalists aspired to rescue the United States from
cultural provincialism. American culture was then chiefly based on
Calvinism and on the Enlightenment; the transcendentalists wanted to
introduce their country to Romanticism and the philosophy of Kant.
Fuller was strongly attracted to German Romanticism. Hence her
ambition, never realized, to write a biography of Goethe. Of the
ancient philosophers to whom her father had introduced her,
Fuller's favorite was Plato.



The American transcendentalists embraced Plato and Platonism in
general. They looked back fondly on the Platonists (more properly
called Neoplatonists) of seventeenth-century Cambridge University in
England. The Unitarian and transcendentalist intellectuals of
nineteenth-century New England were aware of these Renaissance
intellectuals and admired their reliance on individual freedom as the
foundation for religious faith rather than intolerant coercion. The
Cambridge Platonists rejected Calvinism and embraced a humanist form
of Christianity focused on the proper development of human powers.
They not only found Plato's own philosophy congenial, but also
that of the third-century Alexandrian Neoplatonist named Plotinus.
Plotinus had developed a system for self-cultivation, seeking God
within one's own *psyche*. All of this heritage was
invoked in the nineteenth century by William Ellery Channing, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, and Margaret Fuller.



Fuller was thoroughly conversant with Plato, but by no means his
uncritical follower. In some of his writings, Plato was the first
feminist. Among the guardians of his ideal Republic a perfect
meritocracy prevails and women are included within the public spirit
of the *polis*; they receive the same education as men and have
equal opportunity to exercise political power. Elsewhere, however,
Plato compromised with and even legitimated the prevailing subjugation
of women. Fuller accordingly rendered a mixed verdict on Plato's
philosophy of gender (Fuller 1845: 90; also see Okin 1979:
15-70). Here, as always, she used tradition as a resource
without letting herself be imprisoned by it. 



Where Channing and other Unitarian thinkers had been metaphysical
dualists eager to impose the supremacy of mind over matter, Emerson
and most transcendentalists espoused pure idealism. At least
initially, transcendentalism was itself a religion, and a religion
that rejected the relevance of empirical evidence like Scripture,
miracles, and the fulfillment of prophecies (see the entry on
 transcendentalism).



Margaret Fuller retained the dualistic metaphysics of Channing rather
than the pure idealism of Emerson and her other transcendentalist
friends. But she followed the transcendentalist approach to the
distinction between "Reason" and
"Understanding". What we normally regard as perception and
logical thinking they classified as "Understanding".
"Reason" Fuller and others saw as divinely inspired
insight, peculiar to each individual and much more important for true
religion. "Understanding" carried us through the mundane,
practical material world. "Reason" was the faculty through
which a wise person conducted the Platonic Quest to go beyond the
material in search of the ideal. Both Channing and Emerson wanted to
recreate in the modern world the role that had been played by the New
England Puritan minister as inspirational intellectual, spiritual, and
moral leader. Fuller was determined to open this role to women. Even
while embracing nineteenth-century Romanticism, she sought to
implement the Enlightenment ideal of natural rights. In this and other
ways, she stands out to us as the most modern of the New England
transcendentalists. 


### 2.3 Feminism and Conversations



Margaret Fuller's "Conversations" in Boston became
famous among early American feminists. They commenced in 1839 and
continued until April 1844. Each would last would last thirteen weeks
in a pre-announced time and place (usually the parlor of her friend
Elizabeth Peabody). The "conversants" paid to
participate--usually ten dollars for the series, about what
Emerson and other transcendentalists charged for a set of their
lectures. Most of the Conversations were for women only and had about
twenty-five participants. Fuller herself led off each two-hour weekly
session with a talk, which the audience were then encouraged to
discuss and question. The women who attended were generally well-read,
usually Unitarian in practice or background, often wives or relatives
of male transcendentalists. Fuller conceived of her Conversations as
essential supplements to the educational opportunities then available
to middle- and upper-class New England women. These might include
literature, classics, and fine arts, simply decorative or recreational
in purpose. Fuller would lead off with such subjects, but then use
them to press her participants to address serious questions about
women's lives, roles, and purposes. She was applying a
conversational method she had learned from Plato's dialogues and
seen exemplified by her fellow transcendentalist and Plato disciple
Bronson Alcott. Her concern was not so much to teach as to provoke
others to think more deeply than usual (see Capper 1987). 



Among the many women who attended Fuller's Conversations a
number would go on to prominence in feminist and other reform causes,
such as Lydia Maria Child, Elizabeth Peabody, Caroline Sturgis, Sophia
Ripley, Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lydian Emerson (wife
of Ralph Waldo Emerson), Ann Terry Phillips (wife of Wendell
Phillips), Mary Peabody Mann (wife of Horace Mann), and Mary Channing
(daughter of William Ellery Channing) (see Capper 2007: 110).



In these Conversations Fuller sought for a while to avoid discussing
social reform causes other than feminism, such as antislavery, even
though some of her participants were already getting involved in them.
The British feminist Harriet Martineau, who visited America,
criticized her repeatedly for this policy. Eventually Fuller changed
her mind about this. The Conversations, though she intended them to
stimulate the thinking of others, also stimulated her own.



In July 1843, *The Dial* published as its lead article the
fruits of Fuller's new position, "The Great Lawsuit: Man
*versus* Men, Woman *versus* Women". Despite its
title, the article was not framed as a lawsuit. It postulates that
*Manhood* ("Man") and *Womanhood*
("Woman") are transcendent ideals that individuals should
strive to realize, and that each ideal contains both masculine and
feminine qualities. There is no "wholly masculine man; no purely
feminine woman" (1843: 14; also in Fuller 1845: 103). But
because men have greater access to the means of self-development, the
ideals of manhood have been more fully realized in practice than those
of womanhood. This needs to be corrected for the benefit of all
humanity. 



Fuller embraces in this article both Romantic and Enlightenment ideals
of democracy and scorns America's cant about democracy while
betraying it in practice. "I need not speak of what has been
done towards the red man, the black man" (1843: 8; 1845: 14),
she comments in disgust. Now she views feminism as expressing a
parallel objective with the abolition of slavery: both causes labor on
behalf of the individual seeking to realize personal potential (as do
other reform causes like temperance and public education for children
and the mentally retarded). Only after her move to Europe, however,
would her commitment to radical social change become complete.



In the meantime, Fuller's embrace of the feminist cause was
explained more fully in the enlargement of her "Great
Lawsuit" article into her book, *Woman in the Nineteenth
Century*, the work for which she is chiefly remembered. She
completed the book in November of 1844. Since the end of her
"Conversations", she had concluded that feminism was one
of a number of worthy causes for human emancipation women should
support. The book endorses freedom for Ireland and the return of Jews
to Palestine, adding an emphatic warning against the annexation of
Texas because that would strengthen the institution of slavery (Fuller
1845: 90-91).



Modern readers will be surprised that Fuller's book
doesn't mention woman suffrage, which was not then a public
issue--though of course it was clearly implied by her insistence
on equal rights for women, and Susan B. Anthony did acknowledge Fuller
as a precursor of the women suffrage movement. Fuller usually
addresses problems with popular culture rather than legal issues. She
does stress the need for women to have a wider range of occupations
available. 



> 
> 
> You ask me what offices they may fill; I reply--any. I do not
> care what case you put; let them be sea-captains, if you will. (Often
> misquoted as "let them be sea-captains, if they will")
> 
> 
> 
> 



A greater variety of occupations would help women to realize their
potential, to "rouse their latent powers", as she put it
(Fuller 1845: 95). Most often, Fuller addresses the need to transform
the marriage relationship. Instead of the woman belonging to the man,
marriage should enable the two partners to ally and form a whole
together. Ideally, marriage would be a "pilgrimage toward a
common shrine" (Fuller 1845: 42).



At the end, her book cries out for an individual woman to be an
example to the world: 



> 
> 
> And will she not soon appear? The woman who shall vindicate their
> birthright for all women; who shall teach them what to claim, and how
> to use what they obtain? (Fuller 1845: 97) 
> 
> 
> 



Once she had gone to Europe, Margaret Fuller herself would undertake
this role.



One can find fault with Fuller's book. It does not consistently
address its issue with logical development; it rambles, flowing from
one thought to another. She assumes her reader possesses her own wide
range of literary and classical learning, frequently making allusions
that few readers will actually recognize (especially nowadays).
Fuller's book anticipated the first women's rights
convention, which would occur in July 1848 at Seneca Falls in upstate
New York and demanded women's suffrage, though even some
feminists of the time felt reluctant to endorse such a drastic
measure. The book proved quite popular, not only in the U.S. but also
in Britain, where it was pirated at a time before publishers were
required to observe international copyright. Hers was the feminist
book of its time, analogous to Simone de Beauvoir's *The
Second Sex* in the mid-twentieth century.


### 2.4 The Philosopher's Politics



In 1844 Horace Greeley invited Margaret Fuller to move to New York and
go to work for his newspaper the *New York Tribune* as
America's first fulltime literary critic. Greeley had published
"The Great Lawsuit" in the *Tribune* and had
persuaded Fuller to expand it into a book. His wife Mary had attended
Fuller's "Conversations" and had prompted him to
hire her (Capper 2007: 165). The *Tribune* provided Fuller with
a huge audience. Greeley and his paper belonged to the Whig political
party, which had formed in opposition to Andrew Jackson and criticized
his policies, including "Indian Removal" of tribes to west
of the Mississippi. Fuller had travelled through Chicago and the
Midwest earlier in the year and had become publicly critical of white
treatment of the Indians. She shared Greeley's opposition to
slavery and praised Frederick Douglass. Greeley's
*Tribune* embraced many reform causes of the time. Fuller had
come to view women's rights as part of a broad need for social
reform, evident in her compassion for the women in prison whom she
visited. Most of them had been convicted of prostitution, though the
men involved were never prosecuted. 



In Congress, Timothy Fuller had strongly supported John Quincy
Adams's presidential campaign, opposed the Missouri Compromise, and
defended the rights of Native Americans. His daughter and pupil
invoked the sixth President's attitude toward the female sex in
*Woman in the Nineteenth Century* (Fuller 1845: 77-78).
When the Whig Party took shape in the 1830s, both Adams and Margaret
Fuller identified with it. Though women could not vote, Fuller saw the
Whigs as her party of choice. "I attended last week", she
wrote to Emerson on 14 August 1837, "the Whig Caucus here"
(meaning Providence, Rhode Island). "It is rather the best thing
I have done" (Fuller, *Letters*, ed. Hudspeth 1983: I,
295; for more on her Whig politics, see *Letters*, IV, 121).
Actually, the Whig Party was a bit more sympathetic to women's
rights than the Democratic Party, probably because the cause of women
was a predominantly middle-class movement prior to the Nineteenth
Amendment, and the Whigs were a middle-class party. The Whigs were
also the party of both evangelical and Unitarian Protestantism, which
in those days provided the principal base of support for many reform
movements, including antislavery, temperance, public schools, higher
education, international peace, prison reform (which promoted
"penitentiaries" rather than simply punishment like
flogging), the American Bible Society (which fostered literacy), and
asylums for the insane, as well as women's liberation. Though
Unitarians did not share the theology of the evangelical
denominations, they often shared common social and political aims.



In 1846 Fuller went to Europe and become a foreign correspondent for
the *New York Tribune*, writing about European literature and
public opinion. European travel was expensive, and it was not clear
that Greeley was willing to reimburse Fuller's costs
sufficiently. Fortunately, a wealthy and politically enlightened
Quaker couple, Marcus and Rebecca Spring, were friends of Fuller,
decided to spend some time in Europe, and offered to pay for some of
her expenses if she would travel with them and tutor their young son
Eddie. 



Fuller began touring in England and Scotland with the Springs, sending
articles back to Greeley's *Tribune*. She met interesting
people there, including the elderly poet Wordsworth and Harriet
Martineau, the English feminist who had earlier criticized her for
shunning reforms other than feminism. Now that Fuller had embraced a
much wider reform agenda, the two got along. London harbored an
intellectual curiosity of the time, Thomas Carlyle, who rejected the
Calvinist Christianity of his youth, celebrated German Romanticism,
and knew many smart women, one of whom was his wife Jane. When Fuller
and Carlyle met, mutual admiration ensued. But always with serious
reservations. Carlyle's politics were very different from
Fuller's. He rejected democracy, endorsed antisemitism and white
racism, and celebrated populist, nationalist historic leaders like
Oliver Cromwell and Frederick the Great. (Generations later some Nazis
would look back on Carlyle as a precursor.) Another Romantic whom
Fuller met in London would arouse her more uncritical admiration:
Giuseppi Mazzini, the heroic Italian revolutionary. Mazzini embraced
liberal democracy and personal fulfillment as aspects of his Italian
republican nationalism. Fuller welcomed the chance to speak in an
event at a free elementary school for poor Italian expatriate boys,
where she endorsed Mazzini's revolutionary cause and invoked the
principle of self-improvement through public education so popular with
American Unitarians and Whig reformers. Mazzini loved it.



Fuller went on to France, where she confirmed that Paris was indeed
the cultural capital of the world; she enjoyed the music and fine arts
there as well as the literature and philosophy she was accustomed to
engaging. She contrived to meet the woman who had adopted the pen name
George Sand and become one the most popular and successful writers in
all Europe, along with her current lover, Frederic Chopin. More
significant politically was her relationship with Adam Mickiewicz, the
exiled Polish Romantic poet-turned- revolutionary, striving to achieve
Polish independence from Russia and Austria. Fuller had admired him
even before they met in France. His social democracy appealed to her
and so did his Romantic religious passion. It seemed like the two of
them might form a bond both sexually romantic and philosophically
Romantic--but Mickiewicz was already married. Fuller moved on to
the Italian peninsula.



Margaret Fuller's time in Italy proved politically climactic.
She embraced simultaneously the Italian language, in which she became
fluent, and the revolutionary struggle for Italian unity and
democracy. Now back in touch with Giuseppe Mazzini on his home turf,
she eagerly supported his cause: transforming Rome into a democratic
republic. When the new Pope Pius IX temporarily seemed supportive, she
approved but (perceptively) remained cautious. When forced to choose,
the Pope disavowed Mazzini, and Fuller denounced the Pope. As
revolutionary movements spread around Europe in 1848, Fuller was
consistently enthusiastic. She kept her American audience informed
about the European revolutions, explaining that America should no
longer imagine itself to be the model Europe should imitate. She had
become impatient with middle-class moderates and endorsed socialism.
By now she was even further to the Left than Mazzini. Meanwhile,
Fuller's time in Italy was proving climactic personally as well
as politically. She met the younger Giovanni Angelo Ossoli. Together
they had a child and their probable marriage is a point of discussion
in the literature. 



Margaret Fuller's grand international political project was not
realized. The Roman revolution for which she and her husband fought
proved a lost cause, and they had to flee to Florence. Her attempted
return to the United States with her new family ended in disaster (as
related above in Section 1 above). But Margaret Fuller's
ultimate vision of a world where people are free and empowered,
regardless of gender, race, or class, has remained a noble and
inspiring vision.