Margaret Fuller - Biography

Margaret Fuller (May 23, 1810 – July 19, 1850) was a journalist, critic and advocate for many progressive causes in the United States such as women’s suffrage, emancipation of slaves and prison reform. A precocious young child, Fuller was given a rigorous education by her father, Massachusetts congressman Timothy Fuller. As she furthered her education she learned Italian and German, translating the likes of Bettina von Arim and Goethe. Friends and fellow feminists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote, “(Fuller) possessed more influence on the thought of American women than any woman previous to her time.”

At the behest of transcendentalist Elizabeth Peabody, Fuller was invited to the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson in Concord, Massachusetts in the summer of 1836 while Emerson was finishing his essay, ‘Nature’. Emerson was thoroughly charmed by Fuller, writing that Fuller, "…has the quickest apprehension & immediately learned all we knew & had us at her mercy when she pleased to make us laugh. She has noble traits & powers & cannot fail of a permanent success." Emerson introduced Fuller to Bronson Alcott who invited her to teach at his controversial Temple School where she began to teach language classes to women.

In 1839 Fuller began formal Conversations in Elizabeth Peabody’s West Street bookstore in Boston. Primarily directed towards women, Fuller hoped these conversations would provide a setting where women who had learned the same subjects as men but were unable to use their educations could discuss what they knew, explore ideas and freely speak their minds on such topics as classical mythology, education, ethics, the fine arts, and woman. Fuller would continue these conversations for the next five years, culminating in the publication of her seminal feminist work, Woman in the 19th Century.

Ralph Waldo Emerson invited Fuller to attend meetings of the Transcendentalist circle in 1838 and invited her to become the new editor of the Transcendentalist journal, The Dial the following year. She edited the fledgling Dial from 1840 to 1842, which led to her recognition as one of the most important figures in the Transcendentalist movement. After Emerson took over as editor in 1842, Fuller continued to write for The Dial. During this period, Fuller would contribute her article, “The Great Lawsuit” which would later be expanded into her aforementioned book, Woman in the 19th Century as well as writing a well-received debut book, Summer on the Lakes, which she completed on her 34th birthday in 1844. While writing Summer on the Lakes Fuller did a great deal of research on the Great Lakes region in the Harvard College library, thus becoming the first woman allowed to use the library at Harvard.

Woman in the 19th Century was hailed by many as one of the most important feminist documents to date. Famed author William Cullen Bryant wrote of Fuller's book, “the thoughts it puts forth are so important that we ought to rejoice to know it read by every man and woman in America." Drawing from a vast reservoir of philosophical and historical knowledge as well as a familiarity with literature from Virgil to Goethe, Fuller espoused transcendentalist ideas as well as railing against the oppression of women.

Margaret Fuller's crucial idea was that when men and women become equals it will serve to bring divinity to all humans by elevating all consciousness. She posited that in the past, man, as in the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, had always called out for woman, but soon would come the time when women would call for men, when they would be equals and share divine love. She continued by declaring that America has been unable to attain this equality and elevation due to moral depravity inherited from Europe which was reflected by the American treatment of Native Americans and African Americans. Finally she surmised that in order for a true union to occur between man and woman they must first exist as individuals and ended the book calling for women to teach women to become independent.

Horace Greely, publisher of the New York Tribune, who said of Fuller’s work on Woman in the 19th Century, “If not the clearest and most logical, it was the loftiest and most commanding assertion yet made of the right of Woman to be regarded and treated as an independent, intelligent, rational being, entitled to an equal voice in framing and modifying the laws she is required to obey, and in controlling and disposing of the property she has inherited or aided to acquire…hers is the ablest, bravest, broadest assertion yet made of what are termed Women’s Rights,” offered Fuller a job as a writer and literary critic at the Tribune. Her essays, reviews and criticism culminated in the collection, Papers on Literature and Art, which was published 1846. That same summer Fuller left for Europe to become the Tribune’s first female foreign correspondent.

Fuller’s European stint produced thirty-seven reports including interviews with such European literary luminaries as Thomas Carlyle and George Sand to whom Fuller looked up despite Sand’s belief that women were not ready for the vote. She also met Italian antipapist revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini and through him the disinherited Marquis Giovanni Angelo Ossoli with whom she moved to Italy. Having felt alienated for much of her life in New England, Fuller felt a freedom of expression in Italy that she had never experienced before. She joined Ossoli and Mazzini’s struggle to form a Roman Republic, which to her symbolized the struggle for freedom and human rights for women and the laboring class. Diving headlong into her role in her words, “either as actor or historian,” she sent reports of Rome and the turmoil beneath the surface back to the Tribune.

Ossoli was deployed when the war finally reached Rome; Fuller occupied herself by volunteering in a hospital. Although at first a success, the Roman Republic was soon crushed by the Papists. As the Pope was returned to power, Fuller and Ossoli fled Rome to Florence with their newborn son, Angelo Eugene Philip Ossoli. Many of Fuller’s biographers have debated whether or not Fuller and Ossoli were ever actually married, however it is widely accepted that they were not married when Angelo was born. Although they had been attempting to keep their relationship a secret, in Florence they were welcomed into the expatriate community, especially by Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning who had a son the same age as Angelo.

Compiling what she had written on the Roman Revolution, Fuller decided to create a full history of the revolution. She began writing the history while in Rome and, after being forced to flee to Florence by the newly reinstated Pope Pius IX, Fuller set to work on this new work in earnest. Nonetheless, Fuller and Ossoli and their infant son were compelled to leave Italy and sail for New York in May of 1850 aboard the American merchant ship, Elizabeth. Just prior to their departure Fuller wrote, “I am absurdly fearful and various omens have combined to give me a dark feeling ... It seems to me that my future upon earth will soon close ... I have a vague expectation of some crisis—I know not what.” Her sense of foreboding was founded when the captain of the Elizabeth took ill with smallpox, which was then contracted by Fuller’s son, Angelo. Despite the severity of the disease, Angelo survived the ordeal, the captain, however, was not so lucky. Perhaps due to the lack of experience on the part of the first mate who had been appointed captain in place of the deceased, the Elizabeth ran aground on a sand bar roughly one hundred yards from Fire Island, New York. Margaret Fuller, her husband, Giovanni Ossoli and their infant son, Angelo were all claimed by the shipwreck. Henry David Thoreau, at the urging of Ralph Waldo Emerson, went to New York to search for the bodies of Fuller and her husband, only the body of her son was discovered. The manuscript for her history on the Roman Revolution was also lost in the disaster.

Arthur Fuller, Margaret’s brother, served as editor on several collections of her writing including At Home and Abroad (1856) and Life Without and Life Within (1858) and a new version of Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Freeman Clarke and William Henry Channing served as editors on The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller (1852), which was, for a time, the best selling biography of the decade and went through thirteen editions before 1900.

The Fuller family erected a monument to Margaret, Giuseppe and Angelo, under which Angelo is buried. The inscription reads, in part:
By birth a child of New England
By adoption a citizen of Rome
By genius belonging to the world