xlfim , n.r.;.v J . 4 mt .. .o o . Al... . . . .. ‘ .V-AP- vn. .ula.l..¢.v....l . 1! .«I....\I..X aw... I. . 1. l.|lo.hln . .. o ‘0‘.) I. v .0 Ion-l 'l .1 1. n | .- .....A. .1.-. [9.1.1.0. . .1 ... 1731...“. I . . I. .126 if .1 III Q].- T 51...»...2 4151.»...1... J. .L: ...r,. r ‘LN‘Ayu ‘0... . llllllllllIlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll 31293 008779 This is to certify that the thesis entitled ON LOCATION WITH MARGARET FULLER: THE WRITING OF WOMAN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY presented by JUDITH A . NICHOLS has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Mj/W Major professor AUGUST 4, 1992 Date 0-7639 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution LIBRARY Michigan Statel University PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from yoor record. TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due. DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE 333’ 2 5 l5}??? 1: 9.”: N~ .i l ll ii MSU Is An Afflnnetive Action/Equal Opportunity institution cmmt u_i. _—_____. ON LOCATION WITH MARGARET FULLER: THE WRITING OF WOMAN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY BY Judith A. Nichols A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of American Studies 1992 . {/l’:..’j ‘7) “ / / I - 79; ABSTRACT ON LOCATION WITH MARGARET FULLER: THE WRITING OF WOMAN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY BY Judith A. Nichols This study examines Wohah in the Nineteehhh thtugy from a literary perspective, and explores some of the historical and biographical forces involved in the production of the text in order to discover to what extent that process of production is linked to the content of the text. Special attention is given to sources or causes of what’s often been perceived as murkiness in the text. The study begins with the July 1843 publication of Fuller's essay, "The Great Lawsuit. MAN versus MEN. WOMAN versus WOMEN." and ends with the February 1845 publication of the revised, expanded version of that essay, fleheh_1h_hhe Cen . Careful consideration is given to Fuller's relationship with Horace Greeley, and the title revision from "The Great Lawsuit" to Women in the Nineteehhh QEDLEIY- Copyright by JUDITH ANN NICHOLS 1992 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTIONOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOI CHAPTER ONE THE GREAT LAWSUITOF 1843..OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCOOOOOOC00.0.0011 CHAPTER TWO THESWEROF1843.00.00.0000000000......0.00000000000000039 CHAPTER THREE THE REVISION OF 1844....0.0....0....0.0.0.000000000000000053 BIBLIOGRAPHYOOOOOOOO0.0.0.0....OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO00.0.76 GENERAL REFERENCES.OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO0.0...000......79 iv INTRODUCTION At last, my dear William, I have finished the pamphlet. The last day it kept spinning out beneath my hand. After taking a long walk early on one of the most noble exhilarating sort of mornings I sat down to write and did not put down the last stroke till near nine in the evening Then I felt a delightful glow as if I had put a good deal of my true life in it, as if, suppose I went away now, the measure of my foot-print would be left on the earth. Margaret Fuller wrote these words on November 17, 1844, in a letter to her friend William H. Channing (Fuller, The Letters 9; Margeget Eulleg, 3:241). The pamphlet she referred to was WWW. now her most famous "foot-print." There are a number of puzzling things about this text, not the least of which is the fact that Wemah in hhe Nineheenhh Centezy was, and is, frequently criticized for being digressive, flowery, and lacking clarity, while at the same time, is acknowledged as being a powerful and influential text. While Fuller's closest friends and contemporaries found much to admire about Margaret Fuller, the quality of her writing was not one of them. Given her conversational ability and critical intelligence, Ralph Waldo Emerson found Fuller's writing unworthy of her. (Emerson, 3:267) Elizabeth Barrett Browning also had a sense of Fuller as a "very interesting 1 2 person..., [and] far better than her writings...., her... writing being curiously inferior to the impressions her conversation gave you." (Lettegs ef Eligebehh Barreh; hgeghing to Mary Russell hitford, 1836-1855, 3:297 and 309) Twentieth century scholars have had similar complaints. Paula Blanchard, for example, in her 1978 biography of Fuller, identifies "the chief weaknesses of Wohah in the et u ,...[as] stylistic.... [I]t is... casually organized and is padded heavily with examples drawn from Margaret's exhaustive knowledge of history and literature. Many of them are obscure, and obscure or not they dissipate the force of her argument." (220) This apparently flawed text nonetheless has the sort of power to engage readers that we might traditionally associate with great art. In 1869, Horace Greeley said that Wo a ' e ' t th nt , [i]f not the clearest and most logical,... 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.... [He did not argue] that Woman's undoubted wrongs are to be redressed by the concession of what Margaret, or any of her disciples, has claimed as Woman’s inherent rights;... [but he felt] that hers is the ablest, bravest, broadest, assertion yet made of what are termed Woman's Rights; and...[he suspected] that the statement might lose in force by gaining in clearness. (175-176) And in 1988, Laurie James, says: [Some knowledgeable persons have suggested that] Fuller was not a good writer. She was brilliant in conversation; thus her best vitality is lost to us. Her writing style is too flowery, too old-fashioned, with too many classical references. Her work is too difficult to plow through today. She was an intellect, 3 a literary critic; what she actually gig is difficult to articulate. All this is to some extent true. But the same statements can be made about Plato or Emerson, or any number of male writers whose names are engraved on our minds today. (Some persons might refute statements condemning Fuller’s writing because they find what she wrote is brilliant and contemporary.) (flhy_fle:ge;eh WW1). 22) So despite the problems nineteenth and twentieth century readers have found in W. they still read it and admired it, sometimes for the force of Fuller's argument, sometimes for the historical value of the text. But if Fuller was really not a very good writer, how can we account for the success of fienen_1h_hhe_n1neheehhh Qenhhry? The first edition sold out within a week, and today, 147 years later, scholars still find much to consider and to debate with regard to this text. Why? Are the important social, political, moral, and philosophical issues raised by Fuller enough to give this text life? "Woman" was a popular topic in 1843, and the subject of many books, lectures, and sermons which, unlike fleheh_ih_§he_n1heheenhh gehhhzy, have since disappeared from widespread interest. Writing in 1978, Blanchard said that it is not women's issues, but the "familiar Transcendentalist theme of self- reliance.... that makes... [flemen_in_;he_fl1heheenhh_genhh:y] still relevant today, long after the skirmishes over property rights, divorce, political rights, and education have been all but won." (215) While reading in 1990, and now, while writing in 1992, I would have to argue that 4 "skirmishes over...[ various] rights" that might have seemed settled in the 1970's, now seem once again, very much unsettled with heated public debates over abortion, sexual harassment, the social importance and composition of the family, and the recent surge in female political candidacies and campaigns. So is it politics or philosophy that makes this a relevant text? Greeley's comment that Fuller's work "might lose in force by gaining in clearness" (176) suggests that there may be some value in considering this text in the lights of literature and history. Literary criticism alone does not explain flemen_ih_hhe_hiheheehhh_§enhhzy: it cannot account for the power of an aesthetically flawed text. And history alone cannot account for the long, and continuing life of this text: it cannot explain why, over a period of almost 150 years, during which the political tide of gender issues has risen and fallen, and Transcendental philosophy has gone in and out of fashion, this text, though not part of the current traditional literary canon, has steadily succeeded in capturing the interest of readers and spurring debate. Greeley's comment suggests that the aesthetic "flaws" themselves may be, at least in part, responsible for the success of this text. And so, in an effort to begin to understand what makes this text work, what I attempt to do in this study is examine the text from a literary perspective, and explore some of the historical and biographical forces involved in the production of this text 5 in order to discover whether or not, or perhaps to what extent, that process of production is linked to the content of the text, with special attention to sources or causes of what’s often been perceived as murkiness in the text. In some sense, this is a "biography" of the text, and in choosing the word "biography," I follow the lead of Cathy N. Davidson in "The Life and Times of Charlotte Temple, The Biography of a Book." In this article Davidson looks at literature as "not just a matter of words, but... [as] a complex form of cultural production that has as much to do with national identities, changing economies, new technologies, and developing patterns of work and leisure as it does with symbols and metaphors." (158) Davidson is, however, ultimately concerned with the history of the genre of the novel in America, and the development of an American literature, and so she uses the book, Charlotte Temple, as one example of a larger phenomenon. My concern in looking at Wemen_ih_hhe_hiheheehhh_gehhhgy, is with the story of that particular text, i.e., its history, as it relates to the literary qualities of the text. I have chosen the to generally use the word "text," to refer to Wemeh_ih_hhe_hiheheehhh_gehhhgy because it signifies process and emphasizes language, more than the artifactual "book," and I do wish to give some attention to the words, the poetic language of Wemen_ih_hhe_nineheehhh thhhzy, and because I see this text as still in process--it still has readers who find currency in the issues Fuller 6 raises in this text, i.e., it has contemporary political relevance in addition to historical significance (though the scope of this study will not permit examination of that contemporary relevance). Fuller’s own remarks to Channing later in this 11/17/1844 letter suggest that it would also be in process in a very practical sense, as long it had its writer: If given to a publisher I wish to dispose of it only for one edition. I should hope to be able to make it constantly better while I live and should wish to retain full command of it, in case of subsequent editions. (Lettezs, 3:242) In keeping with this notion of "process," I have chosen to begin this story of Womeh 1h hhe Niheheenth thhhgy with the July 1843 publication of Fuller’s essay, "The Great Lawsuit. MAN versus MEN. WOMAN versus WOMEN." and end it with the February 1845 publication of the revised, expanded version of that essay, Weman in the Nineteehhh Century. There is one problem that every study of Fuller's work must deal with: Fuller's Memoirs. Publications about Fuller began two years after her death with the first edition of the Memoigs of Margaret Fulle; stoli in 1852. This two volume edition was edited by Ralph Waldo Emerson, William H. Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, all close friends of Fuller, and well-known literary figures in their day. hemeire sold very well, and the first edition was’ quickly followed by a second and then a third edition. (Channing, 189) Emerson, Channing, and Clarke took great liberties with Fuller's journals, literally cutting, 7 pasting, crossing out, and writing in material as they saw fit. Their editorial methods were no secret at the time, nor were they forgotten through the passage of time. Biographers and literary critics writing about Fuller from 1852 to the present routinely acknowledge the fact that these three editors made major changes to these journals. A great number of writers have nonetheless used the published Memeize as the primary source of information on Margaret Fuller. Some, such as Perry Miller, while lamenting the physical damage done, accepted the alterations as valid because of the good intentions of the editors: These three had not only deep affection for her but also manly respect for her intellect and courage. They made a gallant effort to treat her as a Romantic heroine, to tell all the truth, and to show in their tone that they were men of the world. Unfortunately their standards of scholarship were those of their age, of a culture in which there had not yet emerged professional canons. It is not so much that they suppressed unpleasant passages, and it must be said on their behalf that they were not, where they might have been, censorious. But they eviscerated her journals, re-wrote her letters, and sent to the printer her actual papers cluttered with their editorial notes. As a result of their appalling handling, most originals have disappeared and many fragments that happen to remain are in a shocking physical condition.... (317- 318) Miller's also expressed his own good intentions, and described his own editing methods as follows: Whenever I could find a holograph, I have taken it for my text, with a minimum of editing. I have silently put in the obvious punctuation marks where she in her haste--she was always in haste when she got a pen in her hand--forgot them. Otherwise I have made a literal transcription even when, as often, Margaret’s sentences will hardly parse by ordinary rules of grammar. (318) 8 While Fuller's first editors, and later others like Miller, evidently felt some compulsion to correct her in order to protect her, other scholars simply relied on hemeize because that was the only material available at the time. In my review of some of the literature on Fuller published in the 19705 I found a strong inclination toward a reexamination of original materials, notably Bell Gale Chevigny’s hemeh_ehe_hhe_hyhh, which provides a close comparative analysis of parts of the published MEEQLIQ and what remains of Fuller's original journals. Chevigny, in her assessment of the editing of Ihe_hehei;§, says that Fuller's family censored what they gave to the editors of The itemize. and that [i]n this labor of love and gratitude the editors, James Freeman Clarke, Emerson, and W.H. Channing, came to praise but also, perhaps unconsciously, to bury her. For however rebellious they had been as clergymen, the duty of protecting a lady's reputation revitalized all their orthodoxy. Tacitly assuming that they should be the last to take an interest in her papers, they freely applied pen and even scissors in preparing them for the printer. Whole letters and journal entries were "copied" and in most cases the originals destroyed. But enough scraps in her hand survive to give us some idea of the nature of the damage done. Sometimes her wordiness is abridged, but as often the vitality is converted into sonorous periods more appropriate to the pulpit. e o 0 (9.10) As examples of the editors' alterations Chevigny notes that where Fuller wrote the word "terrible," Channing substituted "sad," and where Fuller wrote that she was "happy," he ' substitute the sedate "I am contented." The editors deleted the name of Jesus Christ or changed it to "a saint." They also added the word "husband" when Fuller mentioned Ossoli, 9 and often added it when Fuller did not mention Ossoli, but evidently they thought she should have. Much of the literature of the late 19703 and the 19808 reflects this, at least partial, recovery of the ‘original’ Margaret Fuller, and offers a sometimes more complete, and sometimes more mysterious and controversial portrait of Fuller’s life and work, especially with regard to issues of love and marriage. The 1987 publication of Ihe_Lehhere_ef_nergezeh_fihller, a five volume collection edited by Robert N. Hudspeth marks the beginning of another era of possibilities in Fuller scholarship. These letters are a gold mine of information not only about Fuller, but her relationships with her contemporaries, white middle-class family life in nineteenth century New England, literacy, the history of reading and writing in the United States, the publishing industry, journalism, European intellectual history, and the Italian Revolution. In this study I have tried to take full advantage of the availability of these letters, and the work done by Chevigny in her attempt to reconstruct Fuller’s papers. I have used The Memoizs only when they have been validated by Hudspeth or Chevigny. One other author that I have found to be of particular interest is Laurie James. James has written three books on Fuller, the latest of which is Nen1_flgmen1_and_uargaret Ehlleg, 1990, and she has also appeared in over one hundred performances of her original one-person drama of the same 10 name. MehL_hemeh‘_ehg_he;ge;eh_fihllez was not written for an exclusively academic audience, and using it for scholarly work is sometimes complicated by the fact that specific sources of quotes or other information are not always as clearly documented as one would like. Judged by comparisons to the work done by Hudspeth, Chevigny, Blanchard, and Miller, and to the Memeige, however, James research is very sound, and thorough. What is striking about the book is both the amount of material that James has pulled together in one volume, and the presentation of that material. She has essentially pulled together information from Fuller's letters and journals and run it side by side with information from Emerson's letters and journals, or from papers of other Fuller friends, and exposed the interactions and relationships of these people in ways not possible in a more traditional biography of a single individual. She sometimes sacrifices narrative for a more staccato presentation, that sometimes resembles either a list or a dialogue more than a narrative, and that seems to capture some sense of the movement and interactions of these nineteenth century New England lives. I have found this book to be a comprehensive source of information, though one that I frequently cross-checked when it was important to be sure of specific sources. CHAPTER ONE THE GREAT LAWSUIT OF 1843 [The Dial was a] quarterly utterance of a small fraternity of scholars and thinkers, who had so far outgrown the recognized standards of orthodox opinion in theology and philosophy as to be grouped, in the vague, awkward terminology of this stammering century, as Transcendentalists.... The chosen editor of this magazine was SARAH MARGARET FULLER, while Ralph Waldo Emerson and George Ripley were announced as her associates. After a time, Mr. Emerson became the editor, with his predecessor as his chief assistant, but there was in reality little change; and, while others contributed to its pages, The Dial, throughout the four or five years of its precarious existence, was chiefly regarded and valued as an expression and exponent of the ideas and convictions of these two rarest, if not ripest fruits of New England’s culture and reflection in the middle of the Nineteenth Century.... What was purposed by its projectors is thus stated in one of her private letters:-- "A perfectly free organ is to be offered for the expression of individual thought and character. There are no party measures to be carried, no particular standard to be set up. A fair, calm tone, a recognition of universal principles, will, I hope, pervade the essays in every form. I trust there will be a spirit neither of dogmatism nor of compromise; and that this journal will aim, not at leading public opinion, but at stimulating each man to judge for himself, and to think more deeply and more nobly, by letting him see how some minds are kept alive by a wise self-trust." from Horace Greeley’s Recollections of e husy Life. (169-170) Fuller's essay, "The Great Lawsuit. MAN versus MEN. WOMAN versus WOMEN." appeared in the July, 1843 issue of The hi 1. At that time the journal was about three years 11 12 old, had a circulation of anywhere from one to two thousand 1 In (Greeley, 169-170), and Emerson was the editor. keeping with the aims of Ihe_hiel, "The Great Lawsuit" was neither dogmatic, nor compromising, i.e., it was neither a feminist manifesto nor a discussion of the pros and cons of the separate spheres of men and women. It was a challenge-- a challenge to the reader to deeply and carefully consider the implications of manhood and womanhood as they were commonly defined in 1843. The title of the essay makes a distinction between, what we, in the 20th century, call gender identity and sexual differences: man and men, woman and women. This was an unusual distinction to make in the mid-nineteenth century, when social roles of men and women were typically described as natural extensions of biological functions or qualities, and as obvious outgrowths of Christian interpretations of human nature. Leading phrenologists of the 18308, for example, offered empirical, scientific proof of these differences: they did "post-mortem dissections on the brains of individuals whose personalities were known...[, and made numerous] correlations between behavior and skull configuration...." (Russett, 18) They concluded that "[t]here is a natural difference in the mental 1 The Dial probably never had many more than 500 or 600 subscribers at any given time, and was always in financial trouble. The journal was, however, frequently passed around among friends, and Greeley’s estimate of circulation may be a fair estimate of actual readership. 13 dispositions of men and women, not in essence, but in quantity, and quality, which no education can remove,.... [and that there is] less vigor in the female intellect...." They also found evidence that "women are guided by feelings, whilst men are superior in intellectual concentration...., [women are] more timid and careful...,[men, more combative, and women, more than men, had the] instinctive tendency to attach one's self to surrounding objects, animate and inanimate." (Russett, 18, quoting Franz Joseph Gall and Johann Gaspar Spurzheim) Christian thought, as it was evolving in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in New England, also lent strong support to this notion of extensive and essential differences between men and women, i.e., differences far beyond the obvious biological reproductive ones. For example, Benjamin Colman, minister of the Brattle Street Church in Boston in the early eighteenth century, wrote that women have a "Natural Tenderness of Spirit" and that, by virtue of their less active public lives, they are protected from a variety of "cares & Snares".... [and] that women have "more of the Life and Power of Religion." (Malmsheimer, 495) And Ralph Waldo Emerson, a minister, filled his journals with thoughts like these, that express his belief in the essential differences in the natures of men and women, and the subsequent differences in earthly roles: Women have less accurate measure of time than men. There is a clock in Adam; none in Eve. February 8?/1836 14 Women see better than men. Men see lazily if they do not expect to act. Women see quite without any wish to act. November 1839 Women should not be expected to write, or fight, or build, or compose scores; she does all by inspiring man to do all. The poet finds her eyes anticipating all his ode, the sculptor his god,the architect his house. She looks at it. She is the requiring genius. Women’s role in life was as "a docile daughter of God withe her face heavenward endeavoring to hear the divine word and to convey it to me." I am thankful that I am a man. 1833 (James, MenI Women, ang haggaret Fuiier, 126-130) Nancy Cott, after reading 65 sermons about or to women, written in New England between 1792 and 1837, concluded that "[b]y the early nineteenth century New England ministers.... had assimilated the eighteenth-century argument that ’women are happily formed for religion,’ by means of their 'natural endowments' of sensibility, delicacy, imagination and sympathy." (128-129) It's important to note in any discussion of these separate spheres, that information about the ideology of the spheres comes largely from the literature of the period, and that other information about the period suggests that while people may have believed in the idea of these spheres, the reality of their daily lives did not always conform to that idea. For example, Alice Kessler-Harris in her two labor histories, 92: Lo Werh and Wemeh fleve higeys Wogheg, demonstrates that men were often not the sole breadwinners for a household, that is, that women and children often 15 worked for wages and made significant and essential contributions to the household income. Kessler-Harris’s research indicates that between 1840 and 1860 anywhere from 10 to 15% of all women worked outside their homes for wages. The majority of these were poorer women (free blacks, immigrants, widows, etc.), but women from the upper classes often worked for a short time before marriage, or part-time for brief periods after marriage. So although at any given time, only a small percentage of women worked outside their homes for wages, a larger number of women had that experience at some time in their lives. Significant numbers of women also worked for wages in their homes, though comprehensive statistics on these people are more difficult to come by. "We know of 18,000 women who braided hats in Massachusetts, and of 15,000 who bound shoes at home. Matthew Carey estimated that by 1831 the nation's four largest cities had between twelve and thirteen thousand women who worked [for wages] at home. And the New York Daily Tribune counted the number of seamstresses who worked at home in New York City in 1845 at more than 10,000." (Kessler-Harris, Out To Wegh, 48) In heeohstrhcting Womanhoed: The Emergence of she Afgo-hmegieen Womah Neveiiet, Hazel Carby argues that "[t]he dominating ideology to define the boundaries of acceptable female behavior from the 18205 until the Civil War was the ‘cult of true womanhood.'" (22-23) Carby notes that historians have established that nineteenth century women 16 (black and white) did not actually live their lives according to the precepts of "the cult of true womanhood," they did not live only in the domestic sphere--women were not always found in woman's place. Given that, Carby argues that the existence of this ideology did, however, have impact on women's lives and work, and that "[i]t is necessary to situate narratives by black women within the dominant discourse of white female sexuality in order to be able to comprehend and analyze the ways in which black women, as writers, used, transformed, and, on occasion, subverted the dominant ideological codes." (20-21) So while one might argue that virtually all American women's lives in the nineteenth century may have been ideologically home- centered, it's clear that many women did not, in fact, live exclusively in the domestic sphere. These widespread, and very basic beliefs in fundamental, inherent and extensive differences between the sexes, though they were not always consistent with the realities of people's everyday lives, did have a wide range of legal, economic, and educational implications for men and women in the antebellum period. The biological and religious arguments that supported the idea of fundamental gender differences, by extension, supported different, gender-based, social roles that shaped the lives of antebellum people, including Margaret Fuller, and shaped "The Great Lawsuit" as well. The legal system, for example, treated people quite differently according to gender. Until 17 1845, when the state of Maine became the first state to pass a law allowing married women to own property, married men in the U.S. had full control over earnings, inheritances, or any other property acquired by their wives. In 1836, when the Married Woman's Property Act was first proposed to the New York state legislature, one of the arguments raised against it was that "giving married women control of their own property... would destroy the institution of marriage and bring a weakening of morality." (Gurko, 88-89) In 1849, when a similar bill was placed before the Tennessee legislature, that body decided, "after much serious deliberation, that women could not be permitted to own property since they had no souls." (Gurko, 146) Fuller had first hand knowledge of the difficulties that married women faced due to legal restrictions on female control over property. Her father died in 1835, leaving no will and an estate that ended up to be of about $20,000. During the married life of Timothy and Margaret Crane Fuller, according to law and custom, Timothy had full control and knowledge of their financial affairs, and his wife Margaret had none. The usually meticulous Timothy had been negligent in keeping clear, complete, and accurate financial records, and so upon his death the Fuller family hired Abraham Fuller, Timothy’s brother and a lawyer to' manage the estate. As Margaret Crane was unable to act as head of the family, this task fell to her 25 year old daughter Margaret, who found herself in a constant struggle 18 with Abraham over money and education for her younger siblings. Blanchard writes that Abraham "took advantage of what he believed to be his authority as senior male of the family...., and that in exchange for each dollar he allowed them for present living expenses he tried to exact a promise that they would adopt the way of life he chose for them. He insisted... that all plans for continuing the children’s education be canceled, that Ellen be sent out as a governess and that one of the younger boys be given for adoption to a farmer who had expressed interest in him." (94) Another situation of which Fuller had first hand knowledge was that of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had been widowed and inherited an income from his wife’s estate, and had complete control over his second wife’ income: Some Concordians thought the Emersons well off. Daughter Ellen tells the story that a gardener once spitted out to Lidian [(Emerson’s second wife)], "Mr. Emerson has seventy thousand dollars with his first wife and twenty thousand with you! I guess he’s got enough!" (James, Een1_E2menl_and_narsaret_fuller. 120) Though the gardener’s figures were not accurate (more reliable sources place Emerson’s inheritance from his first wife at about $22,000), Emerson himself seemed content with his windfall: Emerson, with marriage, commented about his new-found economic security: "I please myself with the thought that my accidental freedom by means of a permanent income is nowise essential to my habits." (James, Men, Women, and Margaret Fuller, 120, quoting Emerson’s journals) Of course Emerson’s good fortune meant that wife Lidian was legally penniless and totally dependent upon Emerson. In "The Great Lawsuit," Fuller wrote of the problems caused by property laws, as well as laws that gave fathers 19 total control in matters of child custody and guardianship, and noted that "when cases of extreme tyranny are made known, there is private action in the wife’s favor. But if woman be, indeed, the weaker party, she ought to have legal protection, which would make such oppression impossible." (11) This passage, as thus far quoted, suggests that Fuller is arguing for legal reforms to protect the weaker sex--in other words arguing on behalf of women based on their differences (in this case, their being weaker), and treating them as a special interest group--which would be consistent with the fundamental assumptions of the dominant ideology of the separate spheres. The phrase "but if women be, indeed, the weaker party," however, does call into question whether or not women are in fact weaker than men. Fuller acknowledges the assumptions of the spheres, i.e., that women are different and in this case weaker, she acknowledges the assumptions of her readers, but rather than accepting them herself, she makes them conditional: "if." And in the paragraphs that follow this passage, Fuller continues to simultaneously acknowledge and undermine the essential notions of the spheres. She describes the common attitude of men toward women as one that assigns women to a subordinate position to men based on women’s natural lack of the power of reason, and that on this basis men believe that they know what is best for women. She then argues that, given that state of affairs, it’s not likely that men will push for needed reforms, and that therefore women must 20 publicly represent their own interests. In this instance Fuller acknowledges the assumption of essential differences between men and women, and then she turns it around and uses it to undermine that same assumption. In other words, she argues that, yes, if we accept the assumptions of the spheres, men and women are completely different--and because they are so different, men cannot represent women’s interests, and so women must exercise political power on their own behalf, and the reforms that women must work for are those that will give them fair and equal treatment in matters of law, education, economics, and personal relationships-~reforms that will "have every arbitrary barrier thrown down." The "arbitrary" barriers are those that treat people differently solely because of their gender, and once those are "thrown down," the separate spheres become a thing of the past--because, ultimately, it is those arbitrary barriers themselves that make men and women so different that they live in separate worlds. This is, one one hand, an intelligent argument for Fuller to make--she wants to disrupt popular beliefs and suggest ideas that are new to her readers, so she begins with ideas that are familiar and eventually links them to the new ideas she wants her readers to consider. But this is also a risky argument for Fuller to make--by acknowledging, and even conditionally, for the sake of argument, accepting these notions of difference, Fuller is in danger of ending up tied to those spheres and forever 21 arguing on behalf of women as a special interest group, making them eternal prisoners of difference. This is a delicately balanced argument. In order to succeed, it must continually acknowledge the idea of difference and simultaneously challenge it--a moment’s pause in either place, and Fuller will either lose her audience or lose her cause. With regard to the mid-nineteenth century work place, gender was a key factor, if not the key factor in determining the kinds of work available to people, and again the issue was discussed and decided in terms of the inherent capabilities and/or limitations of either sex. In the early 1830s, the latest developments in the scientific community often challenged traditional wisdom, but with regard to the sexes, science confirmed traditional wisdom and refined its practice. One idea in particular, especially when linked to developing notions of evolution, had tremendous influence: the physiological division of labor. In 1834 French zoologist Henri Milne-Edwards wrote that "in the creations of nature, as in the manufactures of men, it is mostly by the division of labor that perfectibility is obtained." (Russett, quoting Milne-Edwards, 132) Milne-Edwards later coined the term "physiological division of labor," and by 1851, his work had become influential with people like Herbert Spencer. Alexis de Tocqueville, in Qemee;eey_ih Ameziee, observed how well Americans put scientific theories 22 like this, and the economic theories of Adam Smith, into practice: [Americans] think that nature, which created such differences between the physical and moral constitution of men and women, clearly intended to give their diverse faculties a diverse employment; and they consider that progress consists not in making dissimilar creatures do roughly the same things but in giving both the chance to do their job as well as possible. The Americans have applied the great principle of political economy which now dominates industry. They have carefully separated the functions of man and of woman so that the great work of society may be performed. (Russett, quoting de Tocqueville, 141) In the words of labor historian Alice Kessler-Harris, this meant that "[aJppeals to women’s natural inferiority, her small brain, her lack of physical stamina, and her delicate sensibilities were used to justify the social [and economic] roles women were forced to adopt as the industrial revolution spread", while, at least in theory, the hard- working white male could improve his position in society. "[WJith the emotional and financial support of a family, [he] had access to newly available jobs in medicine, law, and the professions." (Women Heye Aiweys Wenked, 13-14) In financially secure households, this division of labor sometimes worked well, and both husband and wife were content with the arrangement. Financial security is always tenuous for the working class, however, and in the 1830s and 40s, due to the Panic of 1837 and the recession that lasted into 1844, it was also tenuous for the middle and upper classes. As a result, this gender-based division of labor placed an enormous amount of stress on women who had to work 23 for low wages and perform the unpaid labor of the household, and it coerced many men into working long and hard hours, often under difficult conditions, in order to try to support families on a single wage. (Kessler-Harris, flenen_fleye Aiways Worked, 67) Again, Fuller had first hand knowledge of the hardships caused by these ’arbitrary barriers’ in economic life. When Fuller’s father, Timothy, was alive, the Fuller family was, for the most part, quite comfortable. Timothy was a moderately successful lawyer and politician until the election of Andrew Jackson, when the family’s fortunes waned. After his death, however, the family financial situation was often grim. Timothy’s estate was not large to begin with, and Abraham, acting as administrator, doled it out to the Fullers penny at a time. Fuller found herself in the position of not only trying to care for her mother and younger siblings in a nurturing sense, but financially as well. Fuller’s intelligence and education would have qualified her for entry into one of the professions and brought her and her family a measure of financial security-- if she had been a man. As a woman, she could try to marry well, work as a governess, work in a factory at a low-wage female job, do piecework at home, teach, or write. From 1836 to 1839, Fuller had two teaching jobs for which she was promised a good wage (very good, for a woman), but due to the financial problems of the schools, those wages did not materialize. From 1839 until 1844, when she went to New 24 York to work at Wings. she tutored private students, conducted her Conversations, edited The hie; (for which she was to receive $200 a year, that never materialized), and did some writing in order to support herself and help her family. In "The Great Lawsuit" Fuller writes of a number of different kinds of marriages and divisions of employment. One is the partnership that is mandated by the ideology of the separate spheres, where the man furnishes the house, the woman regulates it. Their relation is one of mutual esteem, mutual dependence.... They know that life goes more smoothly and cheerfully to each for the other’s aid; they are grateful and content. The wife praises her husband as a "good provider," the husband in return compliments her as a "capital housekeeper." This relationship is good as far as it goes. (28) And another is one where men and women who are not "obliged to run their heads against any wall," are partners in work and in life, sharing together, on equal terms, public and private interests.... Harmony exists in difference no less than in likeness, if only the same key-note govern both parts. Woman the poem, man the poet...; such divisions are only important when they are never to be transcended. If nature is never bound down, nor the voice of inspiration stifled, that is enough.... The relation could not be fairer, nor more equal, if she too [wrote]... poems. Yet the position of the parties might [be]... the reverse as well; the woman might [sing]... the deeds, [give]... voice to the life of the man, and beauty would [be]... the result.... (31-32) Again Fuller’s argument attempts to undermine popular notions that "difference" mandates separation, and that "difference" is inextricably linked to gender. Again she acknowledges the notion of difference, but this time, 25 instead of turning that notion against itself, she transfers it from its popular link to gender, to a link to the individual. In other words, she argues that, yes, we are different from one another and we may need different roles-- but the biggest differences between us are not linked to gender--they are simply part of the fact that people are individuals and as such, are different from one another, and it’s impossible to legislate that. In the post-revolutionary and antebellum periods, matters of education were also argued and decided according to the characteristics and needs of each sex. Benjamin Franklin, for example, proposed that education for young men should be practical and focus on competence: "Youth will come out of this school fitted for learning any business, calling or profession,... [qualified] to pass through and execute the several offices of civil life, with advantage and reputation to themselves and the country." (Cott, 108- 109) Women, due to the nature of their very different roles as wives and mothers, needed an education that stressed virtue and morality, an education that would make them good companions for their husbands, and intelligent and moral mothers to their children. In terms of curriculum, women could study everything from religion, literature, and philosophy, to botany, chemistry and Latin. But the value and extent of education for women were linked to their roles as daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers. "Educators looked at women in relation to men, and attuned their instruction 26 to their presumed interpersonal roles. (In contrast, men’s education was never justified on account of their influence on women.)" (Cott, 122-123) Fuller’s own education offers an example of both male and female education, and exposes one of the rifts between the assumptions of the spheres and the reality of human life and potential. Her biographers consistently describe her mother, Margaret Crane Fuller, as a model of "true woman," i.e., a submissive wife and devoted mother (Chevigny, 17- 18), and her father, Timothy Fuller, as a devoted and demanding parent, dedicated to doing everything possible to help his daughter develop her intellectual capabilities. The rigorous classical education that Timothy gave his daughter is described by many biographers as being excessive and overwhelming to Fuller. This assessment is based on Fuller’s recollections of her childhood in journal entries and letters, in which she complains that, in many respects, she had no childhood, and suffered from nightmares and headaches due to the demands placed upon her by her father. (Chevigny, 37) James, however, argues that "Timothy was only pressuring with the kind of education any advantaged boy would receive if he were being groomed to enter Harvard where examinations were taken between the ages of thirteen through sixteen," and in support of that she cites the early educations of a number of Fuller’s male contemporaries. (WM. 27) James argument may be correct in terms of curricular comparisons, but the 27 implications of this education had to be different for Fuller as a female in this society, and that may explain, at least in part, some of the pressure that Fuller experienced. Fuller, of course, as a female, was not allowed to study at Harvard, no matter how qualified she might have otherwise been, because of course, according to science and Christianity, a woman could not be otherwise qualified, a woman could not possess the kind of mind, the kind of intelligence required for such a course of study. So after completing this Harvard preparatory regimen at home with her father, she was sent to Miss Prescott’s School in Boston to learn to socialize with girls her own age, and to prepare to enter New England society as a marriageable young woman. Fuller was thus groomed for life in both spheres, and was well prepared for success in both: even Fuller’s detractors rarely disputed her intelligence, and though much has been written about how disagreeable Fuller was or could be, there are also a great number of written testimonials to the quality of her friendship, her devotion to her family, and her social graces. Ironically, preparation for both spheres, complicated admission and/or participation in either. The ideology of the separate spheres was above all, an ideology of separation--and there was no middle ground. In fact, however, Fuller, like women who worked for wages and men who were not sole supporters of their families, was a creature of a middle ground, and as such was well-qualified to 28 comment on the glaring discrepancies between popular notions of the time about the separate and distinctly different destinies of men and women, and what she knew to be true. Fuller’s status is perhaps best expressed by Edgar Allen Poe’s famous remark that "Humanity can be divided into three classes, Men, Women, and Margaret Fuller." (James, Men; Wenen, and Mengenet Fnlier, 469). Having had both kinds of educational experiences, Fuller was keenly aware of what the men were getting and the women weren’t. Beginning in 1839, and ending in 1844, Fuller held a series of "Conversations" for women that attempted to address that discrepancy. Fuller opened the first conversation on November 6, 1839, at 11a.m., in Elizabeth Peabody’s bookstore with the following statement: Women are now taught at school all that men are. They run over, superficially, even more studies, without really being taught anything. But with this difference: men are called on, from a very early period, to reproduce all they learn. Their college exercises, their political duties, their professional studies, the first actions of life in any direction, call on them to put to use what they have learned. But women learn without any attempt to reproduce. Their only reproduction is for purposes of display. It is to supply this defect that these conversations have been planned. (James, MenI Wemen, and Mengezet Eniler, 199) In addition to playing an active role in educational reform, Fuller wrote about it in "The Great Lawsuit": [The influence of famous intellectual women] has been such that the aim certainly is, how, in arranging school instruction for girls, to give them as fair a field as boys. (34) Fuller continues with a discussion of some of the problems faced by educational reformers. Even though brilliant women 29 like De Stael have proven that gender does not determine intellectual capability, she says, reforms are often hampered by poorly prepared teachers and lack of material resources. What Fuller considers of greatest importance at this point, however is this: Whether much or little has or will be done, whether women will add to the talent of narration, the power of systematizing, whether they will carve marble as well as draw, is not important. But that it should be acknowledged that they have intellect which needs developing.... (35) In this discussion of education, Fuller does not make any effort to acknowledge any differences between men and women. Instead she immediately offers flesh and blood proof that there isn’t any gender-based difference, and goes right to the issue of equal opportunity. And in making her case for equal opportunity, she is careful not to construct any new fundamental (re)forms to replace the structures of the spheres--all she wants to do break down barriers, not create new ones by trying to legislate or prescribe reform plans. In order to make her case for challenging the entrenched notions of "man" and "woman," Fuller also uses the rift between the ideology of republicanism, and the realities of the Republic to expose the discrepancies between the ideology of the separate spheres and the realities of human needs and potentials: Though the national independence be blurred by the servility of individuals; though freedom and equality have been proclaimed only to leave room for a monstrous display of slave dealing, and slave keeping; though the free American so often feels himself free, like the Roman, only to pamper his appetites and his indolence 30 through the misery of his fellow beings, still it is not in vain, that the verbal statement has been made, "All men are born free and equal." There stands, a golden certainty, wherewith to encourage the good, to shame the bad. The new world may be called clearly to perceive that it incurs the utmost penalty, if it reject the sorrowful brother. And if men are deaf, angels hear. But men cannot be deaf. It is inevitable that an external freedom, such as has been achieved for the nation, should be also for every member of it. That, which has been conceived in the intelligence, must be acted out. ("The Great Lawsuit," 8) While republicanism has been a central issue on the American agenda since the Revolution, "definitions of republicanism changed as new conditions altered traditional ideas" (Ambrosius, 3), and in order to understand the way Fuller was discussing and using the notion of republicanism, it is necessary to look at the notion of republicanism in the antebellum period, as well as how that notion was being used and changed. During the period of the American Revolution, republicanism meant balancing the three orders in the social hierarchy (the one, the few and the many) with the different forms of government (monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy).... [But by] appealing to the people’s sovereignty to justify independence to justify independence in 1771 the American gentry found it increasingly difficult thereafter to legitimate any form of government other than democracy.... [and so] monarchy and aristocracy succumbed to the increasingly democratic republicanism of the United States." (Ambrosius, 3-4) In addition to the political evolution of the meaning of "republicanism" to include the notion of "democracy," (and exclude notions of monarchy and aristocracy), there was an evolution in economic republican thought as well. The market economy challenged notions that commercialism would 31 corrupt republican government, i.e., that capitalism would undermine the economic independence vital to republican citizenry. Eventually Americans accepted capitalism, and this, paired with the acceptance of democracy, "transformed American political culture by the eve of the Civil War. Freedom now meant popular choice and individual opportunity for economic mobility...." (Ambrosius, 4) In Qhenhe_neneenehie, Sean Wilentz gives an example of the ways in which this capitalist democratic republican ideology was used to change social, political and economic practice in the nineteenth century. He argues that with the emergence of the American working class, there evolved "a distinctive system of meanings, one that associated the emblems, language, and politics of the Republic with the labor system, the social traditions, the very products of crafts." (Wilentz, 63) He explores this system of republican meanings in the context of various ongoing changes in the trades, and notes that ideals about individual rights and independence were not only the basis of discussions about those changes, but at the same time those ideals were adapted to the changing situations of different groups of people. For example, in early nineteenth century America some workshops resisted economically efficient divisions of labor because America was a "free country" and no person should be over another, as would be the case if shop labor were divided. (Wilentz, 62) At the same time, due to large-scale social and 32 economic changes, deep divisions between masters and journeymen were developing, and when confrontations occurred, both groups appealed to the ideals of freedom, independence, and the good of the Republic in arguing their respective cases--masters arguing for their right to pursue their own businesses as they saw fit, including purchasing the cheapest labor, and journeymen arguing for their right to form associations and negotiate a fair price for their own labor. Each claimed a superior vision of political economy and sought to preserve the Republic. (Wilentz, 98) Fuller’s use of the legal term "lawsuit," her references to "freedom," "equality," "national independence," and her paraphrasing of the Declaration of Independence ("All men are born free and equal)", suggest that she was attempting to use the language of politics, the symbols of the Republic to discuss social issues of gender. In other words, she was arguing for equal opportunity and fair treatment of women not on behalf of "women" as a political special interest group, but on behalf of women as members of the Republic, just as the working class was arguing against divisions of labor and hierarchical arrangements in the shops, not on the basis of labor as a special interest group, but on the basis of workingmen as members of the Republic. In addition to the notion of "republicanism," Fuller’s use of the words "slave" and "slavery" need to be considered in terms of their antebellum connotations. In describing 33 the sectional conflicts that were ultimately resolved by bloodshed, Lloyd Ambrosius quotes Michael Holt as arguing that the essence of American politics had been the battle to secure republicanism--government by and for the people, a government of laws whose purpose was to protect the liberty and equality of the people from aristocratic privilege and concentrations of tyrannous power.... It is of the utmost importance in understanding the events of the 18508... to recognize that the word ’8lavery’ had a political meaning to antebellum Americans quite apart from the institution of black slavery in the South. It implied the subjugation of white Americans to another’s domination. It meant the absence of independence. It was the antithesis of republicanism.... (6) Fuller’s comments about slavery in "The Great Lawsuit," sometimes clearly refer to the institution of black slavery in the South, and simply have implications for gender issues. Other passages, however, like this one that compares some husbands to slave traders, use the institution of slavery primarily to address gender issues: "Is it not enough," cries the sorrowful trader, "that you have done all you could to break up the national Union, and thus destroy the prosperity of our country, but now you must trying to break up family union, to take my wife away from the cradle, and the kitchen hearth, to vote at polls, and preach from a pulpit?" (10) In the antebellum context, Fuller’s reference to that institution in an essay on gender politics links the subjugation of women to that institution, and links it in such a way as to argue that the subjugation of women, like the enslavement of blacks, violates the Republic’s most sacred principles. 34 Once spoken during the Revolution, the words "freedom," "equality," and "independence" could not be withdrawn from American discourse, and the nineteenth century notion of democratic republicanism to which Fuller appeals in "The Great Lawsuit" reflects that. Other people also used the symbols of the Republic to argue for women’s rights, most notably those people who met at Seneca Falls in July, 1848, and drafted a "Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions," modeled after the Declaration of Independence, and which includes phrases like: "We hold these truths to be self- evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights...." (Gurko, 96) Another way that Fuller explores the discrepancies between social reality and the religiously and biologically ordained notion of the separate spheres is through her knowledge of classical and contemporary world history and art. She cites numerous examples of Greek and Roman myth, and discusses the lives and writings of a number of contemporary figures like George Sand, Swedenborg, and Geothe, that illustrate equal appreciation of, and laudable qualities and capabilities of both sexes. This exposes the fallacy of considering the notion of the separate spheres as eternal or universal truth; it questions rigid notions of "man" and "woman" by pointing out that in different times and in different places these notions have different meanings, and thus lends support to the challenge suggested 35 by the title, i.e., that "man" and "woman" are creations of a particular society in a particular place and time, and as such, are entirely different from God’s creations. While Fuller exposes a number of discrepancies between the demands of the ideology of the separate spheres and the demands of real life, she does not support a separation between men and women, and she actively tries to bridge the popularly perceived gaps between them. The conflict referred to in the title, the "lawsuit," is not men versus women, or man versus woman. The conflict is not between the sexes--it’s between people and their socially constructed gender identities--so Fuller is not firing a shot in a battle of the sexes. To the contrary, unlike the later title, W a h Ni e ee C ntu , this title directly addresses all adults; this is not a "woman’s" essay that deals with women’s issues (a.k.a., domestic stuff), nor is it a "man’s" essay that deals with "universal" or masculine issues (a.k.a., worldly stuff)--rather it is an essay that asks people to consider what it means--or does not mean--to be men and women. And because men and women are both directly addressed, neither can dismiss any of these issues as not of any real concern to themselves. The ideology of the separate spheres and subsequent prescriptions for gender-based roles and responsibilities were widely disseminated through the popular literature of the day. In The Bonds of Wenenhoed, Cott describes a canon of popular literature, written by both men and women (many 36 of the men being ministers), "consisting of advice books, sermons, novels, essays, stories and poems, advocating and reiterating women’s certain, limited role. That was to be wives and mothers, to nurture and maintain their families, [and] to provide religious example and inspiration...." (8) The role of men is sometimes stated, though often implicit in the descriptions of women’s roles, that is, that men are breadwinners, and are participants in public arenas of life like business and politics. Cott places the "crystallization of the domestic sphere" at about 1830 (8), so at the time Fuller wrote "The Great Lawsuit," the idea of separate spheres was not something under negotiation--it was part of the landscape. It was in this environment that Fuller wrote "The Great Lawsuit" and called into question one of the most fundamental assumptions of her day, i.e., that by virtue of gender alone, men and women were so different from one another that the shapes of their entire lives were cast in separate, and distinctly different molds. In making her case for a re-examination of gender roles, and exploring the tensions between an ideology of gender that argues for strictly defined roles based on what is natural and good, i.e., based on biology and religion, and the reality of social practice and individual potential, Fuller discusses notions of "man" and "woman" as "notions," and not as biologically or religiously ordained destinies. 37 Reactions to "The Great Lawsuit" varied. Sophia Peabody Hawthorne wrote to her mother: What do you think of the speech which Queen Margaret Fuller has made from the throne? It seems to me that if she were married truly, she would no longer be puzzled about the rights of woman. This is the revelation of woman’s true destiny and place, which never can be imagined by those who do not experience the relation.... Home, I think is the greatest arena for women, and there, I am sure, she can wield a power which no king or conqueror can cope with. I do not believe any man who ever knew on noble woman would ever speak as if she were an inferior in any sense: it is the fault of ignoble women that there is any such opinion in the world. (Chevigny, 232) According to a letter from Emerson to Fuller, dated July 11, 1843, he was getting very favorable responses from readers of The Diai: ...We are all greatly contented with our last Dial, as indeed the total circle of my correspondence appears to be. "The Great Lawsuit" is felt by all to be a piece of life, so much better than a piece of grammar. H.D. Thoreau, who will never like anything, writes, "Miss F’s is a noble piece, rich extempore writing, talking with pen in hand." Mrs. Sophia Ripley writes that "Margaret’s article is the cream of herself, a little rambling, but rich in all good things" and Ellery testifies his approbation very distinctly & without qualification. I think the piece very proper & noble, and itself quite an important fact in the history of Woman: good for its wit, excellent for its character-- it wants an introduction; the subject is not quite distinctly & adequately propounded. It will teach us all to revise our habits of thinking on this head. But does it not seem as if only in the poetic form could this right & wrong be pourtrayed?... (Emerson, 3:195) The readers mentioned here by Emerson were all New Englanders of the Transcendental circle, and that description would have applied to most of the readers of The Dial. The_Qinl did, however, come to the attention of others as well, including Horace Greeley, editor of The Neg 38 Tenh_heiTyTTnihn_e. Greeley was a regular subscriber to The 21;; (Watson, 23), and liked "The Great Lawsuit" so well that he published excerpts in The Tnibnne shortly after the gin; issue. Emerson’s praise for the piece and his comment that it would change his thinking is interesting in light of the fact that he may have unintentionally, though not single- handedly, inspired many of Fuller’s remarks in the essay. In 4/29 letter to Fuller, for example, Emerson asked why Ward’s child was named Lydia, and had said "Though no son, yet a sacred event." On May 9, 1943, during the time she was writing "The Great Lawsuit," Fuller wrote the following response to Emerson: S.W.’s child is named Lydia because his mother in the flesh bears that name. Had it been a son it would have been named Jacob Barker! Why is not the advent of a daughter as "sacred" a fact as that of a son. I do believe, 0 Waldo, most unteachable of men, that you are at heart a sinner on this point. I entreat you to seek light in prayer upon it...." (Fuller, Letters, 3:123) In "The Great Lawsuit" Fuller writes: Once I thought that men would help on this state of things [(women needing to develop self-respect)] more than I do now. I saw so many of them wretched in the connections they had formed in weakness and vanity. They seemed so glad to esteem women whenever they could! But early I perceived that men never, in any extreme of despair, wished to be women. When they admired any woman they were inclined to speak of her as above her sex. Silently I observed this, and feared it argued a rooted skepticism, which for ages had been fastening on the heart, and which only an age of miracles could eradicate. (16) Could Fuller have known that Emerson wrote in his journal, "I am thankful that I am a man."? CHAPTER TWO THE SUMMER OF 1843 "I am trying to write [("The Great Lawsuit")]as hard as these odious east winds will let me. I rise in the morning and feel as happy as the birds and then about eleven comes one of these tormentors, and makes my head ache and spoils the day. But if I get ready to print, as I think will be the case by the middle of next week, I wish to be sure of the first place, because I wish to go away quite free and not be followed by proof sheets to Niagara! We shall go the last week of this month or the first of June, and I think I shall go to Chicago and the Lakes, and be absent for some weeks. (Fuller, Lehhene, 3:123) The proof sheets that Fuller referred to in this May 9, 1843 letter to Emerson, were those for "The Great Lawsuit." By May 25, Fuller was on her way to Niagara Falls, to begin an adventure that was to lead to her next publication, a travel book called §nmner_en_hhe_Lehee_in_T§i§, and ultimately to the writing and publication of henen_in_hhe Wm- This trip to the West was the first time that Fuller had travelled outside of the New England area, and the book that she later wrote about the trip, finnme1_en_hhe_hehee_in 15A}, was the first thing that she ever wrote with a national, rather than regional, audience in mind. She made the trip with her friend Sarah Freeman Clarke and Sarah’s brother, James Freeman Clarke, who was also a friend of 39 4O Fuller’s, and later one of the editors of her memoirs. (Fuller’s friend Caroline Sturgis also accompanied them on the first leg of the journey, but returned home after Niagara.) They visited Niagara Falls and Buffalo, and from Buffalo took a steamboat to Cleveland. They traveled up the St. Clair River to Lake Huron, and three days after leaving Buffalo, reached Mackinaw Island. On the fourth day of the voyage they stopped for wood at the Manitou Islands in Lake Michigan, and by the evening of the sixth day, reached Chicago. For the next two months, with Chicago as their home base, the three travellers made excursions to various places in the state of Illinois and the territory of Wisconsin, including Milwaukee and a number of smaller towns and villages. In mid-August, Fuller went to Mackinaw Island to witness the annual government payments to the Ottawa and Chippewa tribes, took side trips to Sault Ste. Marie and St. Joseph’s Island, and then returned to Mackinaw where her companions later joined her. In early September they began their homeward journey. Fuller returned home by way of New York City, where she stayed at the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s brother, William. Henry David Thoreau was at that time tutor to William’s children and was a member of that household. While in New York, Fuller visited Staten Island with Thoreau. Also living in New York City at that time was William Henry Channing, a very close friend of both Fuller and James 41 Freeman Clarke. From 1842 to 1846, Channing was a minister at the Stuyvesant Institute on Broadway, and among his flock were Horace Greeley, editor of The_hen_xe;h_peily_Tnihnne, and Henry James, Sr. (Channing, 185-197) The relationship between Fuller and Horace Greeley was ultimately a close and important one. Greeley was a subscriber to, and something of a cheerleader for The_hiel, and he occasionally printed excerpts from that journal in The_Nen_xenh_heiTy_Tnihnne. His wife, Mary Cheney Greeley, had attended some of Fuller’s Boston "Conversations," and was a friend and admirer of Fuller. Horace Greeley advised Fuller on publication arrangements for finnnez_en_hhe_Lehee in i853, suggested that she revise and expand "The Great Lawsuit," and later, with his partner William McElrath, published it as MW. In December, 1844, Greeley hired Fuller as literary critic for The Tribune. While in Greeley’s employ as literary critic, Fuller lived in Turtle Bay, New York with the Greeley family. Then in August 1846, she left for Europe and became a foreign correspondent for The_T;ihnne, and carried on a personal correspondence with Greeley, including a very sad and touching exchange of letters when Greeley wrote to tell Fuller of the death of his son Pickie, a child to whom Fuller had become very close when she lived with the Greeleys. The relationship between Fuller and Greeley has not yet been explored in much detail, and it’s not clear exactly 42 when Fuller and Greeley actually met. Joan Marie Sudol, in her 1976 master’s thesis, titled "Margaret Fuller: Her Journalism and Relationship with Horace Greeley, 1844-1850," looks at some of the ways in which Fuller and Greeley influenced each other in their journalism, and begins her discussion with Fuller’s move to New York in December, 1844. It is clear, however, that Fuller and Greeley had begun developing a friendship and professional relationship prior to that time. Fuller’s September, 1843 visit to the William Emerson household seems a likely time for Fuller and Greeley to either have met for the first time, or to have begun to develop an ongoing relationship. There are a number of pieces of evidence that suggest this. For one, Fuller was definitely in New York City at that time, and it’s likely that Greeley, as a very busy newspaper editor and publisher, was also in the city at that time. It also appears that Fuller visited her very close friend and regular correspondent, William Henry Channing, while she was in New York. Channing was also closely connected to Greeley as his friend and minister, and Greeley would have had numerous reasons for wanting to meet (or meet with) Margaret Fuller, the former editor and still regular contributor to one of his favorite journals, and friend of, and influence on his wife, Mary. Fuller was also on her way back from a trip West, which was another topic of interest to Greeley. And Fuller was closely connected to several people at the experimental community at Brook Farm, a topic 43 of great interest to Greeley, who, at that time, along with Channing, was developing an active interest in Fourierism and its possible applications at Brook Farm. (Channing went to Brook Farm in the summer of 1846, and Greeley was later a regular visitor to the farm.) Fuller would also have had at least one very compelling reason to want to meet with Greeley: she was a writer and he was a publisher. Her interest in Greeley went back to at least 1842, when she received a March 8 letter from Emerson describing his own unpleasant meeting with Greeley. (Emerson, 3:19-20) Fuller wrote back, "Tell me more about those dim New Yorkers," which Hudspeth reads as a reference to Greeley and other New Yorkers that Emerson met. Fuller’s interest in New Yorkers and New York publishers in particular is not surprising. New York was, by 1840, beginning to dominate the national book market, "and New England writers had a national hearing precisely to the extent that they went to Philadelphia and New York to get it.” (Tebbel, 1:206, quoting William Charvat) Though Fuller had a solid reputation, and never had any difficulty finding teaching jobs or getting published in the New England market, neither her teaching experiences, nor her editorial work at the small, regional journal The Dial had been financially rewarding, and the personal rewards had become limited. In a letter from Chicago, dated August, 17, 1843, Fuller wrote to Emerson that she did not like "the petty intellectualities, cant, and bloodless theory there at 44 home..." (Lehhere, 3:143) She was determined to work full time at a writing career, and even more importantly, she was determined to continually expand her horizons, so looking toward New York at that time would have made sense. On a more substantial note, Fuller had had some recent contact with Mary Greeley according to a somewhat unclear reference to Mary Greeley in a letter that Fuller wrote from Niagara to Elizabeth Hoar on May 30, 1843. (Lehhene, 3:125- 127) And Emerson, in a letter to Fuller dated October 10(?), 1843, mentions that Henry James is leaving for Europe, and that James says that "it seems a real hardship to go away out of the country now that I have just come to talk with her [Fuller]." (Emerson, 3:211) This comment suggests that Fuller may have met James in New York in September, 1843, and if she did, her connection to him would likely have been Channing, who was James’ minister. And in a letter dated September 27, 1843, William Emerson wrote to his brother Waldo that Fuller recently visited them, and as a result of her visit, they also saw Mr. Channing. (Rusk, 3:207n) So, it seems that Fuller did see Channing in September, and as Channing would have been her most likely connection to Greeley, it seems possible and probable that it was in September, 1843 that the Fuller/Greeley relationship began to gel. By November 1843, Fuller had begun writing Snnme:_en hhe_Lehee_in_i§e;, and had gotten permission to use the Harvard College Library in order to research accounts of 45 previous travellers to the West. (She was the first woman ever allowed to use that library.) (Fuller, Lehhene, 3:159) In April, 1844 Fuller was in New York and saw Greeley (Fuller, Lehhens, 3:191), and Emerson was in Boston, trying to negotiate a deal with Little and Brown for publication of 0 es : Dear Margaret, I had hoped to see you lately in Boston; but you have found novelty & recreation in New York, .... ...I had a conversation with James Brown about the "Journey,"[Summer on the Lakes] and he said he & Little would take the book & print it at their own risk, and as soon as it had paid its expenses, would give you ten cents on every copy (of all the copies sold). If the book should not sell, you would lose nothing: if 1000 copies sold, you would gain $100. You would not sell the copy-right, but only one edition to them. This he said was his bargain with Mrs Lee & some other person I have forgotten. It is safer but not so profitable if there be any profit as we will not doubt as to undertake the edition yourself. Write me word of the progress & readiness of the MSS. and what the New Yorkers advised.... (Emerson, 3:246) Fuller had returned to Cambridge by April 22, and Emerson continued negotiating with the publishers on her behalf. The discussions became complicated when Brown left for Philadelphia, and Emerson had to deal with Little. There was some confusion over whether the agreement was to pay ten cents per copy or ten per cent per copy. On April 24, Emerson again wrote to Fuller: Then, said I to Little, our bargain is at an end: I have talked all along with Brown on this understanding of ten cents the copy,; have so represented it to Miss Fuller 6 she so to Mr Greeley.--Now I will go back to my principal & take new counsels. The pendulum has swung back to Munroe & Co.... (Emerson, 3:248) 46 Emerson worked out a deal with Munroe & Co. for "half profits" that he thought was "generous & plausible." He wrote, "The only advantage that L & B have in my eyes is a greater power in N.Y...." (Emerson, 3:248) By April 26, Emerson had Munroe’s offer in writing, and sent it on to Fuller. The offer of half profits included responsibility for half of any losses. Emerson didn’t see that as a problem, however, as he thought the book should at least sell well enough to recover the costs. He wrote to Fuller that if the matter were left up to him, he would accept Munroe’s offer, but "[i]f you meet any skillful person in these matters take advice but without presenting Munroe, & L & B, as competitors. They do not like to have the offer of each shown to other." (Emerson, 3: 249) Fuller decided to go with Little & Brown because of their New York connections. She wanted the larger audience. Emerson confirmed her decision in his letter to her dated May, 3, 1844: Dear Margaret, I have talked with Brown again, & told him that it is your pleasure to make a somewhat less lucrative bargain with him for the sake of securing his best correspondence at South & West, &c.... He will print a N.Y. name on the title page: and can print it in a fortnight. (251) Rusk notes that Little & Brown wrote to Emerson on May 29 agreeing to pay Fuller a royalty of 10 per cent, and advising him that the New York name on the title page was to be "Charles 8. Francis and Company." (Emerson, 3:251) On May 9, 1844 Fuller wrote to Emerson that 47 The printing is begun, and all looks auspicious, except that I feel a little cold at the idea of walking forth alone to meet that staring sneering Pit critic, the Public at large, when I have always been accustomed to confront it from amid a group of "liberally educated and respectable gentlemen." (Lehhens, 3:196) So, by May of 1844, after approximately nine months of regular contact with, and advice from Horace Greeley, Fuller’s gaze was clearly focused on the New York publishing houses and the national audiences that they could deliver. And she was willing to sacrifice immediate, and much needed financial gain in order to strengthen her New York connection. Her book came out during the first week of June, and sometime during that month she wrote to William H. Channing: ...As to my book, there are complimentary notices, in the papers and I receive good letters about it. It is much read already, and esteemed "very entertaining"! Little and Brown take the risk and allow a per centage. My bargain with them is only for one edition; if this succeeds, I shall make a better. They take their own measures about circulating the work, but any effort from my friends helps, of course. Short notices by you, distributed at Phila New York and even Cincinnati would attract attention and buyers!! Outward success in this way is very desirable to me, not so much on account of present profit to be derived, as because it would give me advantage in making future bargains, and open the way to ransom more time for writing. (Lethens, 3:198) On June 3, she wrote to Little & Brown, asking them to "let Mr Greeley of the N.Y. Tribune and N.P. Willis have copies as early as possible They have promised their best suppOrt to circulate the book in N. Y." (Lehhene, 3:200) One month later, she wrote to her brother Arthur that the book seemed 48 to be selling well and had received several good reviews in the Boston and New York papers. (Lehhene, 3:202-206) Emerson actively supported the book and Fuller’s efforts to reach a larger audience. On June 7, he wrote to his brother William: ...Yesterday I read Margaret Fuller’s "Summer on the Lakes," which is a very good and entertaining book & which I hope will be as popular at the South & West as it deserves to be. Also I wish it to go to England. Did you say Calvert had come home. If you are his agent for books, you should send it to him.... (Emerson, 3:255) The whole process of bringing this book to print, and the developing personal/professional relationship between Fuller and Greeley were not unusual in any way. The wealth of opportunities, and the opportunities for wealth in the - booming publishing industry, combined with the economic uncertainties of the period and the risky nature of publishing ventures, forged close, and sometimes contentious alliances between writers and publishers. "Between 1820 and 1850 the publishing industry expanded tenfold in response to increasing national levels of literacy, people’s growing interest in reading as cheap entertainment, and an expanding railroad system making national distribution of books possible." (Coultrap-McQuin, 30) Between 1830 and 1842, about 100 books were published every year by American publishers. By 1853, that figure jumped to 879. The value of books manufactured and sold in the United States in 1840 was about $5.5 million, and by 1850, was about $12.5 million. (Tebbel, 221) In the early 1840’s, newspaper 49 publishers began competing with book publishers by printing and selling cheap editions well below the book publishers’ prices. A clothbound edition from a book publisher that sold for a dollar or two, would be printed in a cheap format and sold by a newspaper publisher for izkc. Book publishers responded by offering cheaper editions themselves, and price wars ensued. (Tebbel, 221-240) It was a highly competitive and risky enterprise that offered potentially large profits, and potential bankruptcy. Accordingly, publishers often haggled with authors over deals, and courted and cared for them as well. The deal that Emerson and Greeley helped Fuller make with Little & Brown was a good one in terms of Fuller’s goal at that time, which was to break out of the small New England market and try to establish herself as a writer on the national scene. James Munroe & Co. was located in Boston, and from 1825 to 1855 was one of the main publishing houses used by the New England Unitarians. If Fuller had taken Emerson’s advice, and accepted Munroe’s offer, she would have remained a New England author, as Emerson did during his lifetime. (According to Emerson’s letters, he worked out a deal with Munroe in October, 1844 for publication of his own book, heseys.) (Emerson, 3:264-265) The "Charles S. Francis & Co." imprint that Little & Brown offered, was, in contrast, a good transitional house name for Fuller. Charles S. Francis was, by 1843, a large and well-established book store, reading room, and publisher 50 located at that time at 554 Broadway in New York City. This New York store was a headquarters for the literature of the Unitarian clergy, and a popular place for transplanted and visiting New Englanders. (Tebbel, 362 and 522) So the Francis imprint would have given Fuller not only the benefit of the New York connection, but also the benefit of an ongoing connection with her already established New England audience. finnne;_en_hhe;hehee was a moderate success. Negotiations with Little & Brown indicated plans for an edition of 1000 copies. Eventually 700 copies sold, and many years later Greeley commented that "It was too good to be widely and instantly popular." (Greeley, hen Yank Deily Tnihnne, July 23, 1850)) Fuller’s letters indicate that she was pleased with the general response to the book, though there could have been little, if any, profit for her from the sales. Greeley was evidently optimistic about Fuller’s potential as a writer of national stature. On September 20, 1844, Fuller wrote to her brother Richard that she intended to accept Greeley’s offer of employment as book review editor for The Tribune, for an annual salary of $500. (Lehhene, 227-229) In comparison, wages for working class women in 1850, ranged from $84 a year to $204 a year, and for working class men, from $144 to $600 a year. Family wages in 1850 were estimated at $514 per year. (Wilentz, 405, Table 14) Fuller’s offer from Greeley also included 51 lodging with his family, so financially, it would have been an attractive offer to Fuller, in that it would allow her to write full time, and not have to supplement her income with teaching jobs. There were, however, some drawbacks to the position. While writing essays or novels was becoming an acceptable and popular form of female employment, journalism was not. Greeley eventually hired a great number of women to write for The Tnihnne, but Fuller was to be the first. And in a society of separate spheres, such trailblazing could be uncomfortable. Additionally, in New England society, especially among the Transcendentalists, the commercialism and industrialism of urban life was highly unattractive, and New Yorkers were considered to be somewhat unrefined.2 Fuller was undeterred, however, and on September 25, 1844, wrote to her friend Maria Rotch: ....I am going to pass the autumn in the country on the North River and in December to N. York to try that city for the winter with a view to living there, if my position suits me. I am to edit the literary department of the N. Y. Tribune. If you remember Mr Greeley, one of the editors, such an arrangement may not seem to you seducing, but as a’s not gold that glitters, so some things that do not glitter may turn to gold. It is a position that offers many advantages and may be turned to much good. (L tters, 3:230) 2 In a September, 1850 letter to Mary Russell Mitford (written two months after Fuller’s death), Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote of Fuller that "[s]he was chiefly known in America, I believe, by oral lectures & a connection with the newspaper-press--neither of them happy means of publicity." (Raymond and Sullivan, 309) 52 As indicated by Fuller’s comment about going to the North River, plans for the revision of "The Great Lawsuit" were already underway. Blanchard writes that "It was probably ... in April, [1844] that Horace Greeley urged Margaret to expand "The Great Lawsuit" into a book, offering to publish it for her." (209) In an August 15, 1844 letter from Fuller to Georgiana Bruce, a friend who was working as a matron at Sing Sing, Fuller clearly indicates that this project is in the works: If you really think me capable of writing a Lehrjahre for women, (and I will confess that some such project hovers before me) nothing could aid me so much as the facts you are witnessing.... I expect soon to publish a more ample version of the Great Lawsuit... (Lentens, 3:221) CHAPTER THREE THE REVISION OF 1844 My power of work is quite external. I can give lessons or do errands while there are minutes in the day. But I cannot think a thought, or write a line except under certain conditions. (Fuller, hettens, 3:159) As Fuller noted in this excerpt from a November 12, 1843 letter to Emerson, she was closely connected to the world around her. Her written work can be read as a dialogue between Fuller and her contemporaries, as well as between her and her biographical, historical, and ‘natural’ context. Her work, her life, her location, and her times were so closely interwoven as to be all of the same cloth, or as Fuller put it in another letter to Emerson: Your are intellect, I am life. My flowers and stones however shabby interest me, because they stand for a great deal to me, and would, I feel, have a hieroglyphical interest for those of like nature with me. (Lethens, 3:209, letter dated July 13, 1844) The worldly circumstances that inspired this dialogue from Fuller also distracted her from her writing. In his memoirs, looking back on the time that Fuller had lived with his family and worked at The Trihune, Greeley commented at length on how sensitive Fuller was to her lifelong problem with severe headaches and back pain, and to her surroundings: A sufferer myself, and at times scarcely able to ride to and from the office, I yet did a day’s work each 53 54 day, regardless of nerves or moods; but she had no such capacity for incessant labor. If quantity only were considered, I could easily write ten columns to her one; indeed, she would only write at all when in the vein; and her headaches and other infirmities often precluded all labor for days. Meantime, perhaps, the interest of the theme had evaporated, or the book to be reviewed had the bloom brushed from its cheek by some rival journal. Attendance and care were very needful to her; she would evidently have been happier among other and more abundant furniture than graced our dwelling; and, while nothing was said, I felt that a richer and more generous diet than ours would have been more accordant with her tastes and wishes. [(Greeley and his wife were Grahamites, and due to their moral convictions and concern for good health, led a rather Spartan existence.)] (Beeoiiechions ef e husy Life, 177) Family concerns also affected Fuller’s work. Caring for her mother, her brother Lloyd (who evidently was mildly retarded), helping her sister Ellen ( the mother of small children, and wife of often unemployed poet Ellery Channing), and helping brothers Arthur and Richard get through college and establish careers, had taken their toll on Fuller’s opportunities to concentrate on writing. Her travels on the lakes, her visits to New York, her growing ambitions, and her growing awareness of boundaries of the New England intellectual circle made it clear that she needed to make major changes in her life if she was ever to have a genuine opportunity to pursue a writing career. Senne; en The hekes had been a transitional work--in that text she had been a traveler, a visitor to distant lands who had returned home. Her next book was to be published in New York City, and was to be her first major contribution to national discourse. Fuller made plans to leave Cambridge. 55 In August Fuller was corresponding with her friend Caroline Sturgis, and making plans for the two of them to spend October and November in Fishkill Landing, New York, where Fuller could finish writing her book before going to work at The_Tzihnne, and Sturgis could write and paint. Fuller’s September 20, 1844 letter to her brother Richard, in which she advised him of her decision to accept Greeley’s offer to work at The Tzibune, suggests that her move from Cambridge is a permanent one, as Fuller also advised Richard of the status of the family’s business affairs and their mother’s health, and that, going ahead, he would have to take more responsibility in these matters. She indicated that she would be leaving for the North River on October 5. Her letter of October 15, to Richard, from Fishkill Landing makes it clear that Fuller had left New England for good: I felt regret at leaving Boston,... so many friendships true, though imperfect, were left behind. But now I am so glad to enfranchised for a few weeks and left to the society of Nature and the current of my own thoughts. (Letters. 3: 234) And even though things were not going smoothly for Fuller, she gave no indication of turning back. Later in this same letter, Fuller wrote that it was taking her some time to unwind and concentrate on her book, and that her plans to move to New York and stay with the Greeleys may have been in some jeopardy, but that she was going to continue with her work, and try to make the most of her present situation. (This letter also suggests that Fuller may have been in New York very recently, and that she saw Greeley.) 56 On Saturday, October 26, Fuller travelled by boat to visit Sing Sing. She and William Channing spent Sunday with the inmates there, he with the male inmates, she with the female inmates, and Fuller returned to Fishkill Landing the next day. At some point in late October or early November, Fuller was able to work in earnest and wrote: "From the brain of the purple mountain" flows forth cheer to my somewhat weary mind. I feel refreshed amid these bolder shapes of nature. Mere gentle and winning landscapes are not enough.... Amid such scenes [(the mountains)], I expand and feel at home. All the fine days I spend among the mountain passes, along the mountain brooks, or beside the stately river. I enjoy just the tranquil happiness I need in communion with this fair grandeur. (Lehhene, 3:232) By November 17, she wrote to William H. Channing that she had finished "the pamphlet," and that she had been able to put a "good deal" of her "true life" in it. In the same letter she wrote that she was not sure how it would look on revision, and that she had to wait several days before undertaking that. But she did think that "it will be much better than if it had been finished at Cambridge, for here has been no headach, and leisure to choose... [her] hours." (Lehhene, 3:242) She also told Channing that she expected the pamphlet to be larger than an issue of The hiel and that as it would take at least a fortnight to print, she would like him to contact Greeley about publishing the book. Greeley and his partner, William McElrath did, of course, publish the book. According to a December 26 letter 57 to Elizabeth Peabody, from Fuller in New York City, revisions had been completed, and the book was "in press at last." (Lehheze, 3:253-254) Greeley was very excited about the book, and on January 15, 1845, wrote to his friend Rufus Griswold, "Margaret’s book is going to sell,.... I tell you it has the real stuff in it." (Brown, 76-77) The book came out in February, 1845, and the entire first edition (which, according to plans made in Fuller’s letters, would have been 1000 to 1500 copies) sold out in one week, at fifty cents a copy. Fuller’s share of the profits was eighty five dollars. (Brown, 132) One of the most significant differences between the original essay, "The Great Lawsuit. MAN versus MEN. WOMAN versus WOMEN.", and the published book Woman in the Nineteenhh Cenhuny, is in the title. While the original title clearly addresses both men and women, clearly addresses the topics of both "man" and "woman," and clearly calls both terms into question by pitting them against the flesh and blood reality of men and women, the title " Tenen in The Nineteeneh Qentury" packages the book as a book about womanhood. The revised title was strongly influenced by the notion of separate spheres, i.e., the notion that men and women are such entirely different kinds of creatures, that it’s possible to consider their lives separately. The , implication for male readers is that this book may be on a topic of interest to them, but is not a topic that directly concerns them. The implication for female readers is, of 58 course, quite the opposite, i.e., that the book deals with the topic that defines their whole lives: womanhood. The importance of the title is reflected in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s comment in a January, 1846 letter to Robert Browning: I have this moment a parcel of books via Mr. Moxon--Miss Martineau’s two volumes.... And ’Woman in the nineteenth century’ from America from a Mrs. or a Miss Fuller. How I hate those ’Women of England’ ’Woman 8 their mission’ & the rest. As if any possible good were to be done by such expositions of rights & wrongs. (Barrett and Browning, hobenh Enowning and Eiigabeth harrettl The Courtship Conrespondence, 183) Barrett Browning did not yet know Fuller or her work, and was thoroughly put off by this title and the ideological and political dead end suggested by it. Barrett Browning’s tastes were somewhat different from those of the majority of the American reading public, however, and from a publisher’s perspective, the revised title would have been very desirable, precisely because it did not suggest anything more than the usual, and very popular, advice or reform approach to what were generally considered ‘women’s’ issues. In other words, this title did not challenge one of the fundamental structures of the social order, i.e., the notion of the separate spheres; rather, it suggested some sort of explication of woman’s sphere, or perhaps some plan for improvement in woman’s sphere. And books on advice and reform sold well in this period. 1 This revised title would have been totally inappropriate for Fuller’s original essay, which was aimed 59 not at all at reform or advice, but at challenging fundamental aspects of the social order by questioning the validity of current notions of manhood and womanhood. But was the revised title appropriate for the book? Fuller didn’t think so. In her Preface to the first edition of Wenen in hhe nineteenth Qenhury, she says that [o]bjections having been made to the former title, as not sufficiently easy to be understood, the present has been substituted as expressive of the main purpose of the essay; though, by myself, the other is preferred, partly for the reason others do not like it,--that is, that it requires some thought to see what it means, and might thus prepare the reader to meet me on my own ground. (Fuller, 13) After stating that the reader’s comfort and ease of understanding is not one of her concerns, and offering food for thought to her reader is, she goes on to explain on precisely what ground she wishes to engage the reader: I meant by that title to intimate the fact that, while it is the destiny of Man, in the course of the ages, to ascertain and fulfil the law of his being, to be that of an angel or messenger, the action of prejudices and passions which attend, in the day, the growth of the individual, is continually obstructing the holy work that is to make the earth a part of heaven. (13) Having explained that her title reflects her desire to challenge the ideology of the separate spheres on the grounds that by obstructing the growth of individuals, the ideology of the spheres hampers the progress of all mankind, she then explains that she is indeed writing about all of mankind: By Man I mean both man and woman; these are two halves of one thought. I lay no especial stress on the welfare of either. I believe that the development of the one cannot be effected without that of the other. 60 My highest wish is that this truth should be distinctly and rationally apprehended, and the conditions of life and freedom recognized as the same for the daughters and the sons of time.... (13) The original title was long, somewhat complicated, and carried much of Fuller’s authorial intent, which was to attempt to uproot the well-established notion that the separate spheres were part of the natural order of the universe. The body of the text of Woman in the Nineteenth Centnny is a revised and expanded version of the essay, using basically the same delicately balanced rhetorical strategies as the essay. Rather than harmonizing with society, the text continually strikes a well-known chord and then adds a note of discord. The text acknowledges widespread beliefs and, in the same breath, attempts to undermine those beliefs. For example, the voice of Miranda gives tangible testimony to the importance of self-determination rooted in religious belief: Religion was early awakened in my soul,--a sense that what the soul is capable to ask it must attain, and that, though I might be aided and instructed by others, I must depend on myself as the only constant friend. This self-dependence, which was honored in me, is deprecated as a fault in most women. They are taught to learn their rule from without, not to unfold it from within.... [Women] are so overloaded with precepts by guardians, who think that nothing is so much to be dreaded for a woman as originality of thought or character, that their minds are impeded by doubts till they lose their chance of fair, free proportions. The difficulty is to get them to the point from which they shall naturally develop self- respect. and learn self-help. (E2man.in.the.flineteenfh QQDLQIY: 40'41) 61 Religious belief is a fundamental aspect of nineteenth century woman’s sphere--the notion of female self- determination is not. To suggest that religious belief is itself, a sense of, or understanding of self-determination, is to turn the dominant ideology on its head. And Fuller’s corollary to self-determination, that the "functions of life... are not ends, but suggestions," (Tenen in_the_Nineteenth_Qenturx. 129). and as such. should not be mandated by the social order, is expressed many times, and in a similar fashion. For example: ....let me say, in behalf of Miranda and myself, that we have high respect for those who "cook something good," who create and preserve fair order in houses, and prepare therein the shining raiment for worthy inmates, worthy guests. Only these "functions" must not be a drudgery, or enforced necessity, but a part of life. Let Ulysses drive the beeves home, while Penelope there piles up the fragrant loaves; they are both well employed if these be done in thought and love, willingly. But Penelope is no more meant for a baker or weaver solely, than Ulysses for a cattle-herd. (Wo an in N'nete t C n u , 44) Again, Fuller begins with what is widely accepted, and uses it as a springboard to a challenge. In this case, Fuller begins with the accepted division of labor: the notion of a woman taking responsibility for homemaking, and a man taking responsibility for bringing resources to the home. Then she introduces the quite unacceptable notion that these divisions are not natural extensions of gender, that one aspect of one’s biology does not alone determine one’s‘ destiny. 62 This text continually states and restates this theme of challenge to the social order, but each presentation reflects different nuances of thought and perspective--one time Fuller approaches it from a religious perspective, and another time from a practical or legal perspective, and yet another time from a historical perspective. This spiraling explanation of her views is consistent with her transcendental ideology. One idea leads to another--each step of the presentation arises from the moment, and is in that sense "self-determining." And because the ideas she presents are new ones, she gives one example after another, from a variety of perspectives in order to try to make known that which is unknown. A fluid structure organizes fluid ideas. One of Fuller’s contemporaries, Orestes Brownson, commented that Weman in the Nineheenhh Qenhnry "had neither beginning, middle, nor end," and could "be read backwards as well as forwards." (Watson, 69) This was not, and is not, an easy book to read. Fuller knew that, and placed a great deal of importance and weight on the original title--it was the reader’s guide to the whole work. It was a title of sufficient substance to tip the scales of thought away from the dominant ideology of the period. This title was crucial to Fuller’s attempt to explain a philosophy that locates the interests of men and women in the common good to an audience that didn’t think that men and women had anything in common. When Fuller either conceded or lost that title for the book, the text 63 had less chance of being read as a call to shake the foundations of that dominant ideology, and a greater chance of being read as a call for reforms in domestic sphere. Given the value of that original title, and its importance to Fuller’s authorial intent, what would have caused her to give it up? Who objected to the former title because it was not sufficiently easy to be understood, and who would have substituted the present title as expressive of the main purpose of the essay? Perhaps Horace Greeley. In the July 14, 1843 edition of Th§_N§E_XQIE_DflilY Tnihnne, Greeley printed an excerpt of Fuller’s original essay, as it had appeared in The_QieT, and he printed it under the title: "Woman--Her Sphere and Needs." A8 a newspaper editor, and as a journalist, Greeley would have been attuned to the needs of a relatively large, general readership, and also would have been in the habit of presenting material to that readership in quickly and easily read forms. And as a member of antebellum society, Greeley, like everyone else, was accustomed to thinking about anything that mentioned "woman" or "women," as being pertinent to the domestic sphere, and ergo unrelated to men- -precisely the idea Fuller wanted "The Great Lawsuit" to challenge. Greeley never really understood that. He always thought of the essay and the book as being about women--what women should be, what women should do, what should be done for women--he never made the connection between "woman" or 64 "women," and "man" or "men" to all of mankind. Both the essay and the book were, as Greeley said, an "assertion... 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." (Greeley, 175-176) But the basis of that assertion was that women, though not in every way like men, are also people--the basis of that assertion was that difference does not preclude equality, and mutual respect, and that equality and mutual respect do not demand uniformity. Fuller did not write a reform plan that prescribed certain changes on behalf of women, or certain changes on the part of women--she wrote an essay that argued that women and men needed to make changes in the social order for the benefit of all Mankind, and that by "Mankind" she meant all people. . It’s not surprising that this part of Fuller’s argument eluded Greeley. Her argument had grown out of a life that had experience in, and an appreciation of both spheres. What nineteenth century man had such experience? What nineteenth century man would actively seek out life in the low-status domestic sphere, that secondary realm of life that tended to either the mundane details of existence Or the rewards of a distant afterlife? Greeley’s understanding of women’s rights was that women wanted the freedom to engage in pursuits traditionally reserved for males. He 65 thought of life in terms of two separate spheres, and if women were unhappy with their own sphere, that could only mean that they wanted out of their own sphere, and wanted to gain entry to his sphere. In that scheme, men would not have to change--women would. Greeley’s inability to understand some of what Fuller was arguing, is evident in his memoirs, when he quotes and comments on this passage from E2man.in_the_uineteenth 9311124123 It is the fault of MARRIAGE, and of the present relations between the sexes, that the woman belongs to the man, instead of forming a whole with him. . . . . Woman, self-centred, would never be absorbed by any relation; it would only be an experience to her, as to Man. It is a vulgar error, that love--a love--is to Woman her whole existence: she also is born for Truth and Love in their universal energy. Would she but assume her inheritance, Mary would not be the only virgin mother. (Fuller, quoted by Greeley in Recollestions. 175-176)3 In his comments on this passage, Greeley makes it clear that he doesn’t really understand what this means, and he credits that lack of understanding to a lack of clarity on Fuller’s part--but he also recognizes that somewhere in this passage, and others like it, is the heart of Fuller’s argument: If you say this is vague, mystical, unmeaning, I shall not contradict you; I am not arguing that Woman’s undoubted wrongs are to be redressed by the concession of what Margaret, or any of her disciples, has claimed 3Greeley’s quotation of Fuller is a paraphrase of'a passage that appears on pages 176-177 of the 1971 Norton edition of E9man_in_the_uineteenth_genturx- This edition is a reprint of an 1855 edition that was edited by Fuller’s brother Arthur. Greeley's paraphrasing is very close in wording, and is true to the meaning of this passage as it appears in the reprint of the 1855 edition. 66 as Woman’s inherent rights; I only feel that hers is the ablest, bravest, broadest, assertion yet made of what are termed Woman’s Rights; and I suspect that the statement might lose in force by gaining in clearness. (Bessllestions. 175-176) Greeley can’t support women’s rights unless women are willing to be like men, and he can’t understand how that’s ever going to happen. He does, however, recognize the seriousness of the social problems caused by the fundamental inequities of the social order, and he is sincerely sympathetic to a call for some kind of change. And he ironically, and accurately notes, that if Fuller had ‘clarified’ this idea, or, in other words, had made it something understandable to him, the force of her argument would have been lost. Fuller would have had to write about men and women as either existing in separate spheres or being identical to one another in order to make this understandable to him, and that would have been an entirely different book. Greeley didn’t always know exactly what it was that he was reading in this text, but he knew that it was important, that it "had the real stuff in it." While Greeley missed the primary assumption of Fuller’s argument, i.e., that, contrary to popular thought, men are, above all, people--and that women are people too, he did have a strong grasp on the idea that the push for women’s rights meant that women wanted the right to engage in pursuits traditionally reserved for males. That was, in fact, just one side effect or by-product of what Fuller was suggesting--she didn’t just want women to be allowed to live 67 in a man’s world, she wanted men and women to freely inhabit the whole world together, with no boundaries to prohibit women from writing poetry or inspiring it, or men from writing poetry or inspiring it. But Greeley latched on to the idea of women entering the male sphere as the main theme of the essay and the book, and thought that through to its reasonable conclusion: Then I had the notion that strong-minded women should be above the weakness of fearing to go anywhere, at any time, alone,--that the sex would have to emancipate itself from thraldom to etiquette and the need of a masculine arm in crossing a street or a room, before it could expect to fight its way to the bar, the bench, the jury-box, and the polls. Nor was I wholly exempt from the vulgar prejudice against female claimants of functions hitherto devolved only on men, as mistaking the source of their dissatisfaction.... If I had attempted to say this, I should have somehow blundered out that, noble and great as she was, a good husband and two or three bouncing babies would have emancipated her from a deal of cant and nonsense. (Beceliechions, 177-178) Fuller’s and Greeley’s different understandings of this point were played out in the offices of The Tribune, when Greeley, quoting Fuller in her book, would tease Fuller and say "Let them be sea captains," as he gallantly opened a door for Fuller. He was in effect saying that if she wished to enter his sphere, she would have to leave hers behind. The full quote from the book gives Fuller’s perspective on the issue: But if you ask me what offices they [women] may fill, I reply--any. I do not care what case you put; let them be sea-captains, if you will. I do not doubt that there are women well fitted for such an office, and, if so, I should be glad to see them in it.... (Fuller, Women in the Nineheenth Cenhury, 174) 68 She goes on to describe Fourier’s thoughts on this matter (Greeley was very enthusiastic about Fourier’s theories), and notes that Fourier proposed a great variety of employments for people, and allowed for "one third of women as likely to have a taste for masculine pursuits, [and] one third of men for feminine." (Fuller, W , 174-175) It was this latter point, about men sharing in what was commonly characterized as the feminine, that Greeley didn’t see. For him, the matter of spheres was an "either or" proposition-- one lived in one sphere or the other, and if women wanted to take part in the male sphere, then they would have to leave feminine values and concerns behind. He quite naturally, gave no thought to men adopting anything from the female sphere, as that would have been a demotion in the social hierarchy. And that, for Fuller, was the crux of the whole matter--she saw each of the spheres as only half of life, and she wanted a whole life. Why did Fuller give in to Greeley on the title (if indeed it was Greeley who wanted the change)? Why would she risk having the book labeled as a "woman’s" book, when her whole point was to undermine the notions of "woman" and "man," and encourage everyone to start thinking of themselves as people first and foremost? There may have been some practical reasons for her decision. Greeley was the publisher, and if he saw the book as an exposition on woman’s sphere, he would have been in a position to push for a title that reflected that. As a successful publisher, 69 Greeley may have felt that the book would sell better with the revised title, and the sales would have been a matter of importance to both Greeley and Fuller. Fuller was keeping the rights to the text, and planned to revise it again at some later date, so she would have future opportunities to use the original title. A successful New York publication, with a national audience, may have been an overriding concern. But Fuller herself had started to think of this, in at least some respects, as a "woman’s" book as early as August, 1844, when in a letter to Georgiana Bruce she said that she was writing a "Lehrjahre for women." Her letters from the period while she was writing the original essay, "The Great Lawsuit" give no indication that she thought of the essay as any kind of "woman’s" piece. What had changed? For on thing, "The Great Lawsuit" had been written within the geographic and intellectual boundaries of New England Transcendental society, and at a time when one of Fuller’s closest friends was Emerson. And the essay reflects Fuller’s dialogue with that society and with Emerson. In contrast, Wenen in the Nineteenhh Cenhnny was written after Fuller had done some travelling outside New England, and had set her professional sights on writing for a national audience. Emerson was busy with his own projects at this time, and friendship between Fuller and Emerson had cooled somewhat. Fuller’s closest friend at this time, or at least her most regular correspondent on personal matters and her 70 writing, seems to have been William H. Channing, who also had close ties to Greeley. And Fuller herself was developing a close relationship to Greeley. flenen_in_hhe Nineheenhh_genhnny reflects Fuller’s changing, expanding dialogue with her friends and surroundings. The emphasis on "woman" in the revised title, which is contrary to some of Fuller’s aims and deprives readers of an important guide to her intentions, is very much in tune with Fuller’s growing awareness of the fact that "men do not look at both sides," (flenen_in_hhe_hineheenhh_§enhnny, 121), and that women would have to take the lead in social revolution. The revised title may have been part of Fuller’s growing awareness of a national social, political and economic reality that was even more difficult to challenge than the social, political, and economic realities of Transcendental New England. The ideology of the spheres was dense--its gravitational pull was strong. That made it difficult for Fuller to develop, define and explain an idea contrary to that ideology, and made it difficult for readers to "clearly" see what she was getting at. She acknowledges that problem toward the end of Woman in the Nineheenhh Qenhnny, and says that as she’s "anxious to leave no room for doubt," she’ll retrace her points "as was done in old- fashioned sermons." (168) Among those points is this one: The growth of Man is two-fold, masculine and feminine. So far as these two methods can be distinguished, they are so as Energy and Harmony; 71 Power and Beauty; Intellect and Love; or by some such rude classification; for we have not language primitive and pure enough to express such ideas with precision. (169-170) These ideas were so far from common belief that Fuller did not have access to words to express what she meant--she had to write in the language of the spheres in order to be understood by her audience, but the language of the spheres had no words to express her ideas. Additionally, the fact that her writing was so bound up in her life, and the fact that her life was one of constant motion, change, new projects, new interests, expansion, and growth, meant that any snapshot of her life, as her texts tended to be, was bound to be b1urred--but it was that motion, that engagement with life, that gave power to her texts. CONCLUSION The nineteenth century ideology of the spheres dictated separate lives for men and women on the basis of beliefs about the differences between them--which were that men and women were biologically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally so different from one another that they quite naturally led entirely different lives. And that due to the nature of those differences, men were superior in areas of politics, economics, and public discourse, and ergo rightfully controlled life in those areas. In a society that was organized around these areas of life, men were more powerful. Women were thought to be superior in areas of religious faith (though not in leadership of religious institutions, as that was a function of public discourse and the male sphere), and in areas of child care, early childhood education, and domestic arts. In a society that placed business and technology above spiritual life, and considered homes and children adjuncts to life, and important only as sources of male support and comfort, women had little power. It was in this world, that Fuller suggested that while there may be differences between men and women, those differences were not so simple and straightforward as to 72 73 allow the simple, clear-cut, and absolute identity and role definitions that the ideology of the spheres dictated. And nor were these differences so vast or absolute that they justified dividing the universe into two spheres. In other words, Fuller suggested that the definitions of "man" and "woman" had been given too much weight, that these labels had been stretched far beyond any reasonable or rational capacity to describe or define the people to which they were attached. This was such a novel idea at the time that it was difficult to communicate it--ways and words for discussing this idea had not been worked out. What Fuller ended up doing in Wonan in the Nineteenth Qenhnny (and in "The Great Lawsuit") was attempting to explain this idea in a variety of ways: through metaphors of republicanism, slavery, mythology, history, and anecdotes. To an audience immersed in the notions of essential differences and natural separation of the sexes, connection between these metaphors may not always be evident, and Fuller’s approach may seem digressive, distracting, or confusing. And the title revision, which was a political and economic concession to the dominant ideology of the period, and one that was made in the name of clarity, may have ultimately added to confusion about what Fuller was really trying to discuss in this piece. Another thing to consider is that, in addition to measuring Fuller’s writing by the social and philosophical 74 mores of the day, some of her readers’ aesthetic standards and expectations may have interfered with their ability to understand this text. Readers who insist that essays have a particular and singular "point," that they have an argument that a reader can follow from a beginning, through a middle and to an end, will be disappointed and/or confused by this text. henen_in_hhe_nineheenhh_genhnny is a collection of variations on a theme. Fuller knew that this presented a problem for some readers, and attempted to satisfy the needs of those readers with a conclusion to flenen_in_hhe hineheenhh_§enhnny that summarizes the main points of the essay. She compared this sort of conclusion to the structure of an old sermon. But flenen_in_hhe_hineheenhh Qenhnny was not an old sermon, and it took Fuller eleven pages to try to summarize all the different points she had addressed in the text. The circular structure of flonen in hhe_Nineheen§h_Qenhnny, the radical theme, the dialogic approach of the author, all make it difficult to sum up this text. It is not a conclusive piece of work--it is not a narrow analysis of gender issues that has sifted and sorted out all the evidence and has presented only what seems pertinent to the case being made. Rather it is an attempt to reflect on a major aspect of life in the nineteenth century, and to reflect on it sometimes directly and pointedly, and sometimes ambiguously and digressively, in order to try to consider it fully. And because Fuller wrote out of her sense of herself in relation to the people and 75 world around her, the text reflects an on-going dialogue and is an invitation to the reader to reflect on these issues as well. Fuller does not offer a prescription, as was so common and so popular to do in this age of reform. She asks readers, "if interested by these suggestions, to search their own experience and intuitions for better." (Tenen_in The Nineteenth CenTnTy, 14) She wanted people to think and live as best they could, as fully as they could--not just follow directions and expect the predicted results. "History jeers at the attempts of physiologists to bind great original laws by the forms that flow from them. They make a rule. They say from observation what can and cannot be. In vain! Nature provides exceptions to every rule." (Woman in the Nineteenth Century, 116) This text was to be a starting point for readers not an end. And readers who want definitive answers and solid conclusions may find Fuller’s challenges, questions, observations and suggestions unsatisfying. Fuller was, in every respect, swimming against the tide of the nineteenth century, and, judging from comments of critics and biographers, through most of the twentieth century as well. The new attention given to Fuller’s work in the latter part of this century may be an indication that, after 150 years, that tide may finally be changing. And the fact that Fuller’s work inspires such attention is a tribute to the quality and vitality of her writing. BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY Ambrosius, Lloyd E. ' ' ° ' ' : ' W Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Blanchard, Paula. ar F a scen e a to Revolution. 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