The Life and Work of Margaret Fuller
Teacher, critic,
revolutionary feminist, author, editor, and prominent
Transcendentalist.
Sarah Margaret Fuller was born in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts on
May 23rd 1810, just three years after her childhood home at 71
Cherry Street was built by her father. She was the eldest child of
Timothy and Margaret (Crane) Fuller. Her mother had been a
schoolteacher before marrying the successful lawyer and legislator
Timothy Fuller. Education was very important in the Fuller
household. Margaret’s love for the written word was fostered from a
young age and lead to a life of literary and philosophical
exploration. Throughout her brief life she was a teacher, a critic,
a feminist, an author, an editor, and a prominent Transcendentalist.
Margaret Fuller was a deeply emotional and reflective individual.
She recounts her earliest memory as that of the death of her younger
sister, Julia Adelaide. She remembers being filled with grief and
loneliness. This experience was followed by an emotionally stifling
childhood one she describes as being filled with “glooms and
terrors”. In her memoirs she refers to herself as having had “no
natural childhood”.
From the age of three Margaret was schooled by her father in
subjects such as math, history, grammar, and classical languages. At
seven she was reading Virgil, Ovid, and Horace and learning Roman
virtue from the Latin historians. The use of her father’s library
was a privilege that she later obtained. Browsing the likes of
Cervantes, Moliere, and the Augustan, and Jacobin prose writers gave
her a strong familiarity with Timothy Fuller’s favorites.
Her formal education was received from Dr. Park’s school in Boston,
the Port school and Miss Prescott’s Young Ladies seminary in Groton,
MA. In tandem with her own studies she also acted as governess to
her younger siblings.
In 1836 she began teaching at Bronson Alcott’s Temple School of
Boston, MA. Her next post was at the Green Street School in
Providence, Rhode Island. Here she began meeting with the
Transcendentalist club. The group was predominately Unitarian
clergymen who desired a reform in the prevailing philosophy of the
day. Ralph Waldo Emerson was an active participant and encouraged
the addition of female members. In 1836 Sarah Margaret Fuller was
one of the first women to join. They called themselves
Transcendentalist “because they believed in an order of truths which
transcends the sphere of the external senses”.
Emerson and Fuller’s relationship blossomed and they became close
scholastic partners. They spent time trading favorite works of
literature and discussing their opinions of them. Once back in
Boston, in 1839, Margaret began hosting organized gatherings she
called “Conversations”. The group was made of prominent women in
Boston of the 1840’s. The wives of Emerson, George Bancroft, Horace
Mann, Josiah Quincy and Theodore Parker were among them. It was at
this time that she began the Dial, a quarterly journal of
Transcendentalist expression that she published with the help of
Emerson and George Ripley. One of her most famous essay’s, “The
Great Lawsuit: Man vs. men, Woman vs. Women”, was published in this
journal in 1843. In 1845 an extension of this work was published as
“Woman in the Nineteenth Century”, an early feminist manifesto and
classic of American feminism.
After two years as the editor of the Dial she began traveling.
First, she went westward to the Northern mid-west of North America.
Drawing on this experience her first book was written, Summer on the
Lakes (1844). She returned to the northeast to work as a literary
critic for the New York Tribune. Her concerns for reform lead her to
write a series on public charities and public institutions such as a
house for discharged female convicts.
In 1846 she traveled to Europe as the New York Tribunes foreign
correspondent. Her publications and writings preceded her and
Margaret found many open doors and opportunities to tour famous
places. After spending some time in England and France she traveled
on to Italy. In April 1847, she found herself in a politically tense
Rome. Exploring the area introduced her to many artisans and liberal
noble men. One such man of liberal principles was Giovanni Angelo,
Marches d’Ossoli. He would soon become Margaret’s husband. They had
a son, Angelo Eugene, in 1848, and in the summer of 1849 they were
married.
During this time a Proclamation of the Roman Republic was made. This
resulted in the French siege of the city in April 1849. Marchese
d’Ossoli was posted in the cities defenses and Margaret went on
active service directing an emergency hospital. When the Republic
was overthrown in July of 1849, Margaret her husband and her son
moved to Florence. It became her goal to complete a history of the
Roman revolution. Life in Florence was restricted, the family was
under police surveillance and Margaret had trouble getting writing
published. They decided to return to America.
On May 17, 1850, Margaret and her family set sail aboard the
Elizabeth. Outside of New York harbor the ship encountered a storm
and was wrecked on Fire Island. Margaret and Ossilli’s bodies were
never recovered. A memorial stands in Mount Auburn cemetery in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Sarah Margaret Fuller was an ambitious and driven individual. From a
young age her object in life was to grow and as she grew older she
was able to encourage others to share in this quest. Her belief that
nothing was unattainable - not even perfection – made her an
accomplished woman in her brief life. In the words of her
biographer, Mason Wade, “the constantly expanding horizons of one
who began as a Cambridge prodigy and ended … as a citizen of the
world.”
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