"I Accept the Universe!"

Margaret Fuller's life as a thoughtleader during the Transcendentalist movement

By Chloe Lizotte  

Transcendentalism. It’s a word that’s hard to define. Some people haven’t even heard of it. In short, it’s a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture, and philosophy that began in New England after the publication of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Nature” in 1836. Transcendentalists wanted to establish a purely American style of writing, one that was different from European literature, as well as define spirituality in a way that took into account new discoveries that had been made over time. Most Transcendentalists were New Englanders around Boston. Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were among the most famous, although one of the major leaders of Transcendentalism was someone whose name isn’t quite as well known. That name is Margaret Fuller.

Margaret was born on May 23, 1810 in a house in Cambridge now known as the Margaret Fuller House. In the present, it’s a settlement house providing information and services in order to help immigrants get accustomed to their new life in America . Her father was Timothy Fuller, a notable lawyer who went on to become a Congressman. He was disappointed that Margaret wasn’t a little boy, so he decided to educate her in what was considered the “masculine” style of the day. She learned Greek and Latin and was subject to intense drilling from her father. She paid the price for this later on, suffering a lifetime of poor vision as well as migraines.

As she got older, Margaret kept seeking education. She attended several schools where she learned German and Italian. Margaret was very intelligent. She found herself unchallenged by other people she knew. She didn’t know many women at her level intellectually. Because of this, Margaret was thought of as quite vain among Transcendentalists. At one point, she stated “I accept the universe!” as if the universe should feel like it had earned her respect. She once announced that she had “never met her intellectual equal.” She did have a stable circle of friends, though. Two of these friends, Eliza Farrar and Harriet Martineau, pushed for her to meet Emerson.

Margaret met Emerson in the summer of 1836. This was just before Transcendentalism began, as Emerson was only just finishing writing “Nature.” At first, Emerson was unimpressed with Margaret. He thought her to be very “plain” and was distracted by her “nasal voice.” However, Margaret won him over and Emerson grew to appreciate her level of intellect and her personality. He once said, “ I remember that she made me laugh more than I liked; for I was, at that time, an eager scholar of ethics, and had tasted the sweets of solitude and stoicism, and I found something profane in the hours of amusing gossip into which she drew me.”

A few years later, in 1839, Margaret was a schoolteacher at Bronson Alcott’s Temple School in Boston, where she also was living during this time. Margaret met Elizabeth Peabody here. Elizabeth was a fellow teacher at the school, and she and Margaret were the only two original female members of the Transcendental Club. However, a couple months later, Bronson was forced to shut down the school. Bronson’s teaching method, which included conversation and questioning instead of drilling and lecturing, was considered controversial in those days, and even though Bronson had won the respect of his students, the school was closed down.

That same year, Margaret started to sponsor Conversations, a series of seminars for women. She invited many women from areas around Boston, from wives of famous intellectuals to women working on starting up their own careers, oftentimes as writers. The women debated many subjects, including mythology, art, education, and women’s rights. These ended in 1844, but the many discussions that occurred provided inspiration for Margaret’s cardinal work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century. This was written in 1845 and is still considered to be a classic piece of feminist writing.

In 1840, Margaret worked as editor of The Dial alongside sponsoring her conversations. The Dial was a Transcendentalist magazine that began in 1840, and Margaret was its first editor. Margaret spent her time persuading uneager writers to write pieces for the publication. Upon reading these articles, she became disgusted, rejected the material, and ended up writing the lion’s share of the issue herself. After two years, Emerson took over as editor, although sources say that Margaret still did most of the editing for Emerson. In 1843, Margaret contributed her essay “The Great Lawsuit: Man vs. Men and Woman vs. Women” to the July issue of The Dial. This essay called for women’s equality.

In 1844, Margaret wrote the book Summer on the Lakes after extensive travels in the west. Horace Greeley read the book and asked Margaret to be a book review editor for his newspaper, the New York Tribune. Margaret accepted and became very successful in this position. She began to write reviews not only on books but on New York art and culture as well.

In 1846, Margaret’s work led her to Europe, where she served as correspondent to the Tribune. She sent articles about art and letters in Europe back to the states. In 1847, she arrived in Italy and got caught up in the Italian revolution and ended up deciding to remain in Europe for longer than she had expected. While in Rome , she met Giovanni Angelo Ossoli, a nobleman who was about ten years younger than her at the youthful age of twenty-six. The two became permanently linked when one year later, in 1848, Margaret had their son, Angelo Eugenio Filippo Ossoli. He was born on September 7 in the village of Rieti. It’s unknown if the two were ever married – although Margaret did write an extensive letter home about the birth of her son, her other letters don’t spend much time talking about her involvement with Giovanni.

In May of 1850, the revolution failed, so Margaret and her family decided it was time to set sail for America. Margaret brought the manuscript she had been working on with her. The book was going to be about the Italian revolution. However, tragedy struck when the captain died of smallpox and the less experienced replacement miscalculated their position and crashed the ship into a sandbar within sight of Fire Island, NY. The powerful current claimed the lives of Margaret and her family. The date was July 19, 1850. Henry David Thoreau was sent to search the wreckage for her remains, but none were found. Her manuscript was also lost forever.

For the forty years Margaret Fuller was alive, she did her best to make a difference in the world, and it worked. Her work as a Transcendentalist and a feminist propelled the state of American culture miles forward, which is one of the reasons why Emerson was so happy to know her. Two of the most famous faces of the women’s rights movement, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, wrote in one of their extensive volumes of A History of Woman Suffrage that Margaret “possessed more influence on the thought of American women than any woman previous to her time.” I’m sure Margaret would be happy to confirm that they were correct in their thinking if she were alive today.

Chloe Lizotte is an Apprentice with emerson consulting group inc. and a student at Concord Middle School, Concord MA. Her articles have been published on numerous websites and in the Concord Journal.

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