Sarah Margaret Fuller is often referred to only as Margaret Fuller. The reason I chose to write about her is because I found it interesting that she is known as “America’s first true feminist” among other things such as an editor, journalist, teacher, and literary critic. I feel that since she was a female during the 1800s she worked hard to make a good name for herself. Her works that I chose to write about specifically are “The Great Lawsuit” which is a profound essay arguing for women’s equality, and “The Fourth of July” which was an essay written to describe the values Margaret believed America had lost.
Sarah Margaret Fuller was born in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts on May 23rd, 1810, she later dropped her first name for professional purposes. She was the first of nine children. Her father Timothy Fuller was a lawyer, and a congressman and very educated. In her younger years of life her father rigorously educated her, teaching her Latin, Greek, French and Italian. She spent many hours a day studying, and by the time she was ten years old had read stories such as Shakespeare and many other classics. At age fourteen she moved away from her family to attend school, and a year later she returned home to continue educating herself (Baym).
Margaret had huge dreams of one day becoming a writer, but those dreams were put on hold when her father suddenly passed away in 1835. At this time, her mother was also sick and it became her responsibility to take care of her family’s finances. There were not many job opportunities available to women during this time, she found a teaching job and accepted the position. She first began teaching at Bronson Alcott’s Temple School in Boston and taught there until she went on to teach at the well-kn...
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...ever in change, and believed that America needed to make changes for the better. She voiced her opinion that America should not be content with what it had become, and was not afraid to share her opinion about what it should be. The 4th of July is a very important day for America and its people. Without that day, it would not be what it is today.
Works Cited
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Print.
"Margaret Fuller." American Transcendentalism Web. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 May 2014. .
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. "Margaret Fuller (American Author and Educator)." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 03 May 2014. .
When Fuller was a little girl, she only grew up with her father for her mother had passed away. This could have lead her father to raise her as a boy. In the 1800s, it was the males who were allowed to read and study, but she had broken a norm. She was heavily influenced in all literate intellect as a child, but it came with a price-her sanity. She describes it as “ The consequence was a premature development of the brain that made me a “youthful prodigy” by day, and by night a victim of spectral illusions, nightmare, and somnambulism.”(199) Again, I doubt that any child her age went through this, thus another norm was broken. When she said that “Ever memorable was the day on which I first took a volume of SHAKESPEARE in my hand to read”(212), this shows that this memory was very dear to her. Although her father prohibited the reading of Shakes...
Hester Prynne, of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and Margaret Fuller, Themid-nineteenth-century Campaigner for the Rights of Women
Born in 1863 to a Presbyterian minister and his wife, she grew up in a very tight-knit family as the oldest of five children. In 1880, the family moved to Massachusetts where they settled and built a home. Mary’s father wanted the best for his daughter, and designed and supervised Mary’s education until she graduated in 1882. Upon graduation, Mary attended Smith College with an advanced standing as a sophomore. In 1893, Mary’s sister passed away and Mary dropped out of college for a season, taking her classes through private lessons at home. Mary returned to Smith College in 1884 as a senior and graduated with a concentration on philosophy and classics. In 1886, two years after graduation from college, the Calkins family went to Europe for a holiday that lasted for sixteen months. Mary continued to expand her knowledge of the classics and upon returning to America, her father arranged an interview with the President of...
During her time, women were expected to stay at home and take care of her house and children. Going out and being an active member of society just wasn’t something women did. She opened doors for many women by being a trailblazer in the medical field. She never had kids or a husband because she believed that the soldiers were her children. A family could have hindered her success and ability to travel to battlefields. She wouldn’t have been able to risk her life every day knowing she had a family that needed her. There is still the stigma that women “need” to have children. She didn’t follow that stigma and showed that women don’t have to have children to have a fulfilled life. She filled her life the way she wanted to not how everyone else wanted her
Perkins, Geroge, and Barbara Perkins. The American Tradition in Literature. 12th ed. Vol. 2. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print
Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832, in Germantown, Pennsylvania. She was born to Abigail Alcott and Bronson Alcott. Louisa is the second of four sisters. She was raised in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts (Eds. of Merriam- Webster 12). Bronson Alcott worked at a school for the first five years of Louisa’s life (Herzberg 13). Once a mob encircled the school, Bronson quit the job (Kunitz and Haycraft 18). Her father was penniless and could not contribute and support Abigail, Louisa, and the three other children Bronson fathered. Since he could not support them, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, and Henry David Thoreau helped to raise Louisa (Eds. of Merriam- Webster). Thoreau helped Alcott with her education. He helped her out because her father did not support her (Kunitz and Haycraft 18). Emerson, Parker, Thoreau, and her father influenced her education and lifestyle during her childhood. Bronson Alcott, who found Fruitlands, which later failed, drove his family into poverty (Eds. of Merriam- Webster 12). Alcott (Louisa) did not understand this (Douglas 31). She soon realized that she had to work in order to support herself and her family. She worked as a teacher for a short time and then began to write. She sta...
Margaret Lucas Cavendish was born into a wealthy family located near Colchester, England. Margaret was the youngest child of eight children and was loved just as dearly as the rest. She like most her siblings took on education with a governess and learned what they needed to get by in the world. Unlike her other siblings Margaret showed signs of admiration towards reading and writing, but more towards her writings. While in her youth she managed to write sixteen of what she called her “Baby Books”, the shortest of which consisted of 50-75 pages of written work. It was at this point that she found her passion for the written word.
Throughout her childhood Fuller’s father worked hard to educate her and make sure she studied. Due to this she was given the education that girls of her time lacked. Fuller’s father is credited for working her hard. Reuben states, “Fuller's education was unusual only because she was a girl. She was provided a ‘rigorous but severe model of intellectual attainment’” (Reuben, "Chapter 4: Margaret Fuller."). Boys during this time were educated to the same level Fuller was, but for girls this type of rigorous education was a rarity. Girls weren’t encouraged to study, they were encouraged to marry. Even though Fuller was encouraged to study by her father, there were still differences that were clearly evident between the educati...
In the nineteenth century the inequality of women was more than profound throughout society. Margaret Fuller and Fanny Fern both women of the century were much farther advanced in education and opinion than most women of the time. Fuller and Fern both harbored opinions and used their writing as a weapon against the conditions that were considered the norm in society for women. Margaret and Fuller were both influential in breaking the silence of women and criticizing the harsh confinement and burden of marriage to a nineteenth century man. Taking into consideration Woman in he Nineteenth Century by Fuller, Aunt Hetty on Matrimony, and The Working-Girls of New York by Fern, the reader can clearly identify the different tones and choice of content, but their purposes are moving towards the same cause. Regardless of their differences in writing, both Fern and Fuller wrote passionately in order to make an impact for their conviction, which was all too similar.
Perkins George, Barbara. The American Tradition in Literature, 12th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print
...that so many children read and loved her books. But when she was seventy-six she decided to stop writing and spend more time with Almanzo on their farm.
Baym, Franklin, Gottesman, Holland, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 4th ed. New York: Norton, 1994.
Baym, Nina et al. Ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter 8th ed. New York:
Belasco, Susan, and Linck Johnson, eds. The Bedford Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 1, 2nd Ed., Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. 1190-1203. Print.
She told her publisher, John Blackwood, in January 1861 about her idea of writing the novel. She wrote that it was “a story of old-fashioned village life, which has unfolded itself from the merest millet seed of thought” (Modern Library).