Analysis Of The Great Lawsuit By Margaret Fuller

Margaret Fuller’s Firm Stance

Margaret Fuller was one of the most influential woman of her time. She was a very intelligent woman that had concurred three languages by the age of thirteen. She used her knowledge to open the eyes of many people. She was a true Transcendentalist. She was very vocal about her views on gender roles of the nineteenth century even though they were not considered traditional. She challenged the conventional gender roles of the men and women. She was not afraid to tell women to fight for their natural rights. Her audience was composed of both men and women. She makes sure to point out that when she speaks of men, she is referring to both men and women. One of her greatest literature written was The Great Lawsuit. It was

originally published in the Dial in 1843 and two years later it was made into a book.

In The Great Lawsuit she focused on several themes; the abolition of slavery and women’s rights, gender, Androgyny, intellectual companionship and religion (Moreland). There are several points in her literature that highlight her work in reference to gender roles.

Fuller highly stresses the equality of gender roles throughout her literature. Women in this era are expected to stay home and tend to their family. They are not to assume any role that the man has. They are considered to be less than a man. One man speaks out and makes a comment about his wife; “She is to amiable to wish what would make me unhappy, and to judicious to wish to stop beyond the sphere of her sex” (Fuller 750). The gentleman was referring to the spheres as the socially constructed division of gender. According to Fuller,

there were two separate spheres: the public and the private. The public sphere was for the men. It was considered the “dirty world” which involved politics, business and local pubs. Women did not belong to this sphere. The woman’s sphere was the private one. It was more delicate and was valued as a child bearer, homemaker and the guardian of the hearth (Moreland). Fuller clearly does not agree with the separation of the spheres and rebells against it. She states, “All men are born free and equal” (Fuller 748). The gentleman she was addressing this to along with several others, truly believe that a woman is happy at home doing her shores. The only reason women are quiet in this society is because that is what has been expected of them. Fuller then so cleverly answers him, “You are not the head of your wife. God has given her a mind of her own”(Fuller 750). I wonder if that statement shocked him along with all the other men that long believed that they were the head of their wives? It is amazing how she shined the light in women’s minds. Fuller was so outspoken and unafraid to point out the obvious.
Fuller goes on to point out the women are influential to all men. In some way or another, women are involved in every aspect of a man’s life. She goes on to say, “All men are privately influenced by women; each has his wife, sister, or female friends and is too much biased by these relations to fail of presenting their interests” (Fuller 751). Why would a man not consider women’s rights when they are such a big part of their life? Maybe they think that it would make them a lesser man. Maybe they were just afraid they would no longer have control of them and would cause chaos in their home.
Fuller also questions the Christianity of these men in the following statement:
“But, when it has been shut long enough, we remember that where there is so much smoke, there must be some fire; with so much talk about virtue and freedom must be mingled some desire for them; that it cannot be in vain that such have become the common topics of conversation among men; that the very newspapers should proclaim themselves Pilgrams, Puritans, Heralds of Holiness” (749).
Fuller points out that in a marriage, one should still have the passionate individual rights. She is influenced by Emerson when she says, “The gain of creation always consists of grown of the individual mind” (Moreland). She goes on to further state that what women want is
“that which once includes all these and precludes them...that which is the birthright of every being capable to receive it, --the freedom, the religious, the intelligent freedom of the universe, to use it means, to learn its secret as far as nature has enabled them, with God alone for their guide and their judge” (Fuller 759).
Fuller also mentions that instead of a marriage of a man and a women being a whole, women are still viewed as ownership to a man (Moreland). She strongly believes that a marriage is two people joining to make a whole. She states that “what women needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely, and unimpeded to unfold such powers as were given her when we left our common home” (Fuller 752).
In conclusion, Transcendentalism becomes compatible with feminism and the expansion of gender roles. Transcendentalist are considered rebellions against conventional thoughts. Criticism did not let Fuller stop her from defending women’s rights. She refused to accept that women were any less than a man and she expressed it well in The Great Lawsuit.