Margaret Fuller: American Transcendentalist and Feminist

Margaret Fuller to many America's first true feminist or at least holds a distinctive place in the cultural life of the American Renaissance: a time of reform. Her long career lines as literary critic, editor, journalist, teacher, and political activist resulted ultimately into a turned revolutionary. She was charismatic and a spellbinding conversationalist who attracted not only the wives of prominent citizens, but also other sympathetic social reformers. Fuller was a outside their "sphere" thinker with intoxicating proposition on the issues and views Transcendentalist and equality. After The Dial  ceased publication in 1844, Fuller was to relocate to that New York City and to serve as literary and cultural critic for the paper: the New York Tribune. Where she underwent a time of personal growth with  increased awareness of urban poverty and strengthened her commitment to social justice and to the causes that concerned her: prison reform, Abolitionism, Women's Suffrage, and educational and political equality for minorities. Margaret Fuller was a woman of many causes and as said by Higginson, “many women in one.”

Margaret Fuller was born on May 23, 1810 in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts and received an intense education from her father Timothy Fuller. He taught her Greek and Latin at a very early age. With his prominent role a Lawyer and later role as Congressman he provided Margaret Fuller with a fine education. However her father's death brought financial problems for the family, and she became responsible for the education of her younger siblings. She taught school at Bronson Alcott's Temple School and the Green Street School in Providence for two years; in this of this also had time to write. In 1839 she she established formal conversations on various topics, primarily for women, which were very successful for five years. From 1840 to 1842, she served with Emerson, an intellectual, as editor of The Dial a literary and philosophical journal. She wrote many articles and reviews on art and literature and in 1843 The Dial published her essay The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men, Woman versus Women where she called for women's equality. She later wrote expansion of her essay titled  Woman in the Nineteenth Century, which became a classic of feminist thought under the newspaper Tribune. In 1846, as foreign correspondent for the Tribune Fuller traveled to Europe. Where sent back articles about letters and art in Europe and  meet many well-known European writers and intellectuals. She was also involved in Italian revolution of 1847; where she met her husband and had a child a year later. When the revolution failed, they decided to sail to America: in May 1850. This trip back to the Americas ended in tragedy after the captain died of smallpox and was hastily replaced by a less accomplished replacement who crashed in a storm off of Fire Island, New York, on July 19, 1850. Where Fuller, her husband, Angelo, and her baby, Ossoli, sadly drowned.

Fuller advocated overall the movement of women suffrage and the importance for equality in the time of reform of the nineteenth century. This equality was directed to everyone those of color, those who were minorities and of course to women. She expressed her strong views through conventions and her writings. Fuller soon became the voice of feminism through her writings: The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men, Woman versus Women and Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Fuller believed that the only  way to bring about social reform was through understanding human nature. She articulated the unique Transcendental approach of interpreting the world and with that bettering the condition of humankind through the use of Enlightenment and Humanist ideas. And rejected Calvinism and the concept of original sin and instead took a more optimistic view of human nature. Where human nature was  fundamentally good and how legislation tended to blur the morals and ideals of those with power. Fuller wanted to see any type of improvement in society when it came to equality be it through equal educational opportunities to women or the right to vote. However Fuller did long for  immediate changes to society and express dissatisfaction with what she saw as a lack of progress. Reynolds asserts that she “advanced the powerful idea, adopted by her fellow Transcendentalists, that oppression, when resistant to words and moral suasion, must be met with righteous violence.” and advocated for “Radical Reform”. She was molded by the larger reform movement in the American republic as well as by being an active contributor towards reform. This shaped her view of a good society in one that offered equality rights, opportunities and stance to all, not just the Protestant man.