The Essential Margaret Fuller

THE ESSENTIAL MARGARET FULLER

DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

GENERAL EDITOR: SUSAN L. RATTINER

EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: MICHAEL CROLAND

Copyright

Copyright © 2019 by Dover Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2019, is a new selection of works reprinted from standard texts. A new introductory Note has been specially prepared for this volume. Minor inconsistencies and other style vagaries derive from the original sources and have been retained for the sake of authenticity.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fuller, Margaret, 1810–1850, author.

Title: The essential Margaret Fuller / Margaret Fuller.

Description: Mineola, New York : Dover Publications, Inc., 2019. | Series: Dover thrift editions | This Dover edition, first published in 2019, is a new selection of works reprinted from standard texts. A new introductory Note has been specially prepared for this volume.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018054581 | ISBN 9780486834092 | ISBN 0486834093

Subjects: LCSH: American literature—Women authors—19th century.

Classification: LCC PS2502 2019 | DDC 818/.309—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018054581

Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

83409301 2019

www.doverpublications.com

Note

MARGARET FULLER was born on May 23, 1810, in Cambridgeport (now Cambridge), Massachusetts. Timothy Fuller—her father, a lawyer, and, later, a congressman—was disappointed that his firstborn child was a girl. She was a precocious child, and he gave her a rigorous home education. He taught her to read at age 3 and Latin by age 6, and she learned Greek, Italian, and French as well. To excel in all things should be your constant aim; mediocrity is obscurity, he advised when she was 10. She blamed his grueling education for the depression and headaches that plagued her throughout her life. Formal education was limited for girls at that time, and she did not attend school until she was 14.

After her father died in 1835, Fuller, her mother, one sister, and five brothers were transferred to the custody of her uncle. At 25, she resisted the idea of going from one man’s care to another’s. Instead, she supported her immediate family through teaching and writing. She often worked to the point of exhaustion.

Fuller developed her ideology through her literary endeavors and events. In 1839, she published a translation of Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe. From 1839 to 1844, in Boston, she led conversations that empowered women. Attendees discussed women’s roles in society, in addition to literature, education, mythology, and philosophy. From 1840 to 1842, she was the editor of The Dial, a Transcendentalist quarterly magazine, for which she wrote poetry, reviews, and critiques.

In 1845, Fuller published her landmark book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century. The groundbreaking feminist work advocated for political equality between the sexes and promoted emotional, intellectual, and spiritual fulfillment for women. She encouraged young women to seek independence from the home and family, with education as the vehicle to do so. She argued against strictly domestic roles for women, saying that they should fulfill their potential in whatever ways appealed to them. Let them be sea-captains, if they will, she wrote. The first edition of the book sold out in two weeks. Knickerbocker Magazine called it a well-reasoned and well-written treatise. Woman in the Nineteenth Century was widely influential, inspiring numerous readers as well as the Seneca Falls Women’s Convention, the first women’s rights convention in the U.S., in 1848.

The present volume is divided into three parts. The first section features Fuller’s autobiographical writing, including poetry, journal entries, and letters, from 1833 to 1842. The second section is Summer on the Lakes, which she published in 1844 about frontier life in Illinois and Wisconsin. The third section collects Fuller’s reviews and essays from the New-York Daily Tribune from 1844 to 1846. During this period, she was a literary and cultural critic for the newspaper, making her one of the first professional women in the American press. Collectively, these works give a comprehensive look into Fuller’s thinking beyond her magnum opus.

Fuller went to Europe in 1846 and became the first American woman to be a foreign correspondent, reporting for the Tribune. She traveled to England, France, and Italy, exchanging ideas with writers and radicals. In 1847, she met the Marchese Giovanni Ossoli, a lieutenant in the Italian Unification Movement. They had a child, Angelo, and apparently got married secretly. They were involved in the Roman revolution in 1848, and Fuller wrote a history of the revolution. In 1850, while attempting to return to the United States, she died in a shipwreck near Fire Island, New York. Fuller, her husband, and her manuscript were never found; only the body of her infant son was recovered.

Contents

Autobiographical Writings

Summer on the Lakes

Reviews and Essays

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS

TO A. H. B.

On our meeting, on my return from N. Y.

to Boston, August 1835.— Written Jany 1836

Brief was the meeting,—tear-stained, full of fears

For future days, and sad thoughts of the past,—

Thou, seeing thy horizon overcast,

Timid, didst shrink from the dark-coming years;

And I, (though less ill in mine appears,)

Was haunted by a secret dread of soul,

That Fate had something written in her scroll

Which soon must ope again the fount of tears;

Oh could we on the waves have lingered then,

Or in that bark, together borne away,

Have sought some isle far from the haunts of men,

Ills left behind which cloud the social day,

What grief I had escaped; yet left untried

That holy faith by which, now fortified,

I feel a peace to happiness allied;—

And thou, although for thee my loving heart

Would gladly some Elysium set apart,

From treachery’s pestilence, and passion’s strife,

Where thou might’st lead a pure untroubled life,

Sustained and fostered by hearts like thy own,

The conflicts which thy friend must brave, unknown,—

Yet I feel deeply, that it may be best

For thee as me, that fire the gold should test,

And that in God’s good time we shall know perfect rest!

TO THE SAME. A FEVERISH VISION.

After a day of wearying, wasting pain,

At last my aching eyes I think to close;—

Hoping to win some moments of repose,

Though I must wake to suffering again.

But what delirious horrors haunt my brain!

In a deep ghastly pit, bound down I lie,—

About me flows a stream of crimson dye,

Amid its burning waves I strive in vain;

Upward I stretch my arms,—aloud I cry

In frantic anguish,—raise me, or I die!

When with soft eyes, beaming the tenderest love,

I see thy dear face, Anna! far above,—

By magnet drawn up to thee I seem,

And for some moments was dispelled the fever’s frightful

dream!—

Sept. 1835

Journal, 1835

On the evening of the 30th of September, 1835, ever memorable era—my father was seized with cholera and on the 2d of October was a corpse. For the first two days, my grief under this calamity was such as I dare not speak of. But since my father’s head is laid in the dust, I feel an awful calm, and am becoming familiar with the thought of being an orphan. I have prayed to God that Duty may now be the first object and self sit aside. May I have light and strength to do what is right in the highest sense for my Mother, brothers and sister.

It has been a gloomy week indeed. The children have all been ill, and dearest Mother is overpowered with sorrow, fatigue and anxiety. I suppose she must be ill too. When the children recover I shall endeavor to keep my mind steady by remembering that there is a God, and that grief is but for a season. Grant, Oh Father, that neither the joys and sorrows of this past season shall have visited my heart in vain. Make me wise and strong for the performance of immediate duties, and ripen me, by what means Thou seest best for those which lie beyond.

My father’s image follows me constantly, whenever I am in my room he seems to open the door and look on me with a complacent tender smile. What would I not give to have it in my power to make that heart beat once more with joy. The saddest feeling is the remembrance of little things, in which I have fallen short of love and duty. I never sympathized in his liking for this farm, and secretly wondered how a mind which had for thirty years been so widely engaged in the affairs of men could care so much for trees and crops. But now, amidst the beautiful autumn days, I walk over the grounds and look with painful emotions at every little improvement. He had selected a spot to place a seat where I might go to read alone and had asked me to visit it. I contented myself with where you please, Father, but we never went; what would I not now give, if I had fixed a time, and shown more interest. A day or two since I went there. The tops of the distant blue hills were veiled in delicate autumn haze, soft silence brooded over the landscape, on one side a brook gave to the gently sloping meadow spring-like verdure, on the other a grove—which he had named for me—lay softly glowing in the gorgeous hues of October. It was very sad; may this sorrow give me a higher sense of duty in the relationships which remain!

Journal, July 1833

The occupations of the coming months I have settled. Some duties come first to parents, brothers and sister but these will not consume above one sixth of the time— The family is so small now Mother will have little need of my sewing— We shall probably receive very little company— The visits required of me by civility will be few— When the Farrars return I hope to see them frequently—and E. Woodward I may possibly know if she comes. But I shall not, of free-will look out of door for a moment’s pleasure— I shall have no one to stay here any time except Eliz— I love her and she is never in the way— All hopes of travelling I have dismissed— All youthful hopes of every kind I have pushed from my thoughts— I will not, if I can help it, lose an hour in castle-building and repining— Too much of that already! I have now a pursuit of immediate importance to the German language and literature I will give my undivided attention— I have made rapid progress for one quite unassisted— I have always hitherto been too constantly distracted by childish feelings to acquire any thing properly but have snatched a little here and there to feed my restless fancy therewith— Please God now to keep my mind composed, that I may atone it with all that may be conducive hereafter to the best good of others—

Oh! keep me steady in an honorable ambition. Favored by this calm, this obscurity of life I might learn every-thing, did not these feelings lavish away my strength— Let it be no longer thus— Teach me to think justly and act firmly— Stifle in my breast those feelings which pouring forth so aimlessly did indeed water but the desert and offend the sun’s clear eye by producing weeds of rank luxuriance. Thou art my only Friend, thou hast not seen fit to interpose one feeling, understanding breast between me and a rude, woful world, vouchsafe then thy protection that I may hold on in courage of soul.

Journal, March 1839

What did Elizabeth’s father gain by forcing her young mind—by constraining her attention long after the physical sense was weary— by keeping her, a delicate child up till midnight whenever it suited him?— He did, as he proposed, sharpen her faculties, give her the power of attention, and bestow an intellectual tinge on a being born only to love eagerly and feel keenly— But the time gained then has been lost since fifty times over in the indulgence of a morbid sensibility created by this unnatural taxing of her faculties—her imagination is disordered; she is doomed to nervous horrors through life, her soul is constantly shaken by too aspiring thoughts on subjects she has not strength to comprehend— Had she grown up an unmolested flower by the side of some secret stream she had been a thing all natural life, softness, bloom and fragrance—

What have I gained by my precocity? I have never been happy— my faculties have always been rather intensely in action and produced no harmonious result. I was more robust by nature than E. Therefore the results have been different. But I am confident that I should have been much superior to my present self had sense, intellect, passion been brought out in the natural order. . . .

Many observations in this book give me new light upon myself— From my own experience merely I should go great lengths with him— In childhood I was a somnambulist— I was very subject to attacks of delirium— I perceive I had what are now called spectral illusions— For a long time I dreaded excessively going to bed for as soon as I was left alone—huge shapes—usually faces advanced from the corners of the room and pressed upon me growing larger and larger till they seemed about to crush me— Then I would scream and sit up in bed to get out of the way— Sometimes eyes would detach themselves from the faces and come upon me— I had peculiar horror of this. I told these things sometimes but little notice was taken— I thought other children felt the same for I knew they generally dreaded going to bed— Mother seemed ashamed of my sleep-walking and I had an idea something ridiculous was attached to it— I was twice found in convulsions in consequence of dreadful dreams— One of these dreams I shall never forget— I was wading in a sea of blood— I caught at twigs and rocks to save myself: they all streamed blood on me— This fancy was attributed at the time to my incessant reading of Virgil.— When I was about twelve all these things left me—but were succeeded by a determination of the blood to the head— My Father attributed it to my overheating myself, my Mother to an unfortunate cold—both were much mortified to see the fineness of my complexion destroyed— My own vanity was for a time severely wounded but I recovered and made up my mind to be bright and ugly— My father could not be so easily reconciled but was always scolding me for getting my forehead so red when excited.

If Brigham’s theory were correct it would be curious to trace the singular traits of mind I exhibited up to my twenty first year to this ugly and very painful flush in the forehead— The summer of that year my forehead and indeed my whole system was pretty fairly exhausted of the vital fluid under the care of Dr. Robbins— Thanks to his medicines, my nerves became calmed, flushes and headaches gradually disappeared— I craved sleep, so long almost impossible to me— My wakefulness had always been troublesome to myself and others— I would now lie down in the middle of the day and sleep for hours. . . .

Journal, c. 1839

The son of the Gods has sold his birthright. He has received therefor one, not merely the fairest, but the sweetest and holiest of earth’s daughters. Yet is it not a fit exchange. His pinions droop powerless, he must no longer soar amid the golden stars. No matter, he thinks— I will take her to some green and flowering isle. I will pay the penalty for Adam for the sake of the daughter of Eve. For her I will make the earth fruitful by the sweat of my brow. No longer shall my hands bear the coal to the lips of the inspired singer, no longer my voice modulate its tones to the accompaniment of spheral harmonies. My hands lift the clod of the valley which now dares cling to them with brotherly familiarity. And for my soiling dreary task-work all the day I receive—food.

But the smile with which she greets me at the set of sun, is it not worth all that sun has seen me endure. Can angelic delights surpass those I possess when pacing the shore with her watched by the quiet Moon, we listen to the tide of the world surging up impatiently against the Eden it cannot conquer. Truly, the joys of heaven were gregarious and low in comparison. This alone is exquisite, because exclusive and peculiar.

Ah Seraph—but the winter’s frost must nip thy vine. A viper lurks beneath the flowers to sting the foot of thy child, and pale decay must steal over the cheek thou dost adore. In the realm of Ideas all was imperishable. Be blest, while thou canst; —I love thee, fallen Seraph, but thou shouldst not have sold thy birthright.

All for love and the world well lost. That sounds so true. But Genius when it sells itself gives up not only the world but the universe.

Yet does not Love comprehend the universe? The universe is Love: Why should I weary my eye with scanning the parts, when I can clasp the whole this moment to my beating heart?

But if the intellect be repressed, the idea will never be brought out from the feeling. The amaranth wreath will in thy grasp be changed to one of roses, more fragrant, indeed, but withering with a single sun.

Went to bed with pain in the right side of my head. Could not get to sleep for a long time, when I did, dreamt that the Egyptian, who has so often tormented me into the nervous headache, sat by my side and kept alluring a gigantic butterfly who was hovering near to rest upon her finger. He approached, but, declining her skinny fingers, flapped his crimson wings for a moment, then settled on the left side of my forehead; I tried in vain to drive him away; he plunged his feet, bristling with feelers, deeper and deeper into my forehead till my pain rose to agony. I awoke with my hand on the left side of my forehead to which the pain had changed. After the usual applications had been made I again fell asleep. Now I was in a room of a large hotel, very ill. On the bed was a pink counterpane, such as was in the little room where I endured so many weeks of nervous headache without complaining to any body. I wandered out, I know not why, and could not find my way back. I went through the usual distresses of going into strange rooms, & at last, in despair and quite exhausted, lay down in an entry. Many persons passed by, some looked scornfully at me, others tried to lift me but I was too heavy and at last was left lying on the floor. I was in great pain in the back. I was wrapt in a long robe, but my feet were bare They seemed growing cold as marble. I thought I must die in this forlorn condition, and tried to resign myself to bear it well. At last a sweet female form approached she sat down by me on the cold, damp, brick floor. I cried, O Amy, and laid my head on her bosom. I wept long and bitterly. She had dark eyes and regular features the face I never saw before, but the feeling I had was the same as when Anna in the fever drew me up out of the pit of blood. It is the true feeling of feminine influence, the same which Goethe wished to illustrate by his tale of the child charming the lion, the influence of benignity, purity and faith. As I have masculine traits, I am naturally often relieved by the women in my imaginary distresses. When I awoke the warmth was gone from the stone + (+ not a tombstone) which had been placed at my feet. They were marble cold, the pain had gone, into the spine and my pillow was drenched with tears.

This dream seems, as mine, from the nature of my illness must be, very illustrative of the influence of the body on the mind when will and understanding are not on the alert to check it. Let those who undervalue the moral powers of will analyze their dreams and see what they become without it.

Journal fragment, 183—?

But I love many a good deal, and see some way into their eventual beauty. I am myself growing better, and shall by and by be a worthy object of love, one that will not anywhere disappoint or need forbearance. Meanwhile I have no fetter on me, no engagement, and as I look on others almost every other, can I fail to feel this great privilege? I have no way tied my hands or feet. And yet the varied calls on my sympathy have been such that I hope not to be made partial, cold or ignorant by this isolation. I have no child, and the woman in me has so craved this experience that it has seemed the want of it must paralyze me. But now as I look on these lovely children of a human birth what slow and neutralizing cares they bring with them to the mother. The children of the muse come quicker, with less pain and disgust, rest these lightly on the bosom. . . .

Journal, Autumn 1839

Second moonlight. A lonely one. A sweeping, voluptuous breeze. A cloud car for the moon. My ridge of rocks and trysting tree. The singing grove. The distant hills and sweeping fields across which the eye of Raphael steals. Sympathy with between Nature and Man.

Thoughts of Makaria and her stellar correspondences But I cannot think of other souls now. Mine is too fresh and living. Understood wreaths of stars and the wandering in the Elysian grove.

My head wrapped in my shawl I would listen to the music of earth then raise it and look straight into the secrets of the heaven. I fail the moon. Thoughts on lunacy. How could Swedenborg think children were in the moon. She makes me understand the attraction Sand finds in un front impassible. I need to go wild when she rose and shriek. No bliss for me. But now Nature suffices me, and often I rest in her centre as in the bosom of God!

Shapes move across the valley. Abandon thyself to second sight. . . .

DISTANT SHOUTS of laughter. Reflexions on kindred. Michel Angelo’s Sybils. Where is my tripod? Clearest moon. Heaven without a fleck or mark.

7th High rapture of solitude. Full moon. Presence of my Daemon. I cannot yet touch its hand. . . .

10 Dec 39

. . . Yet O it seems almost no mortal before me can know such a rapture as mine in the pine wood. Alas that I cannot paint it, only tell the feeling. I envied God, as the last flush of the sun light fell. Then rose the silver bow amid the gorgeous clouds and then again I saw it, a diamond of shivering sparks, trembling in the brook!

Journal, 17 April 1840

Then a woman of tact and brilliancy like me has an undue advantage in conversation with men. They are astonished at our instincts. They do not see where we got our knowledge and while they tramp on in their clumsy way we wheel and fly and dance hither and thither and seize with ready eye all the weak points (like Saladin in the desert). It is quite another thing when we are come to write and without suggestions from another mind to declare the positive amount of thought that is in us. Because we seemed to know all they think we can tell all—and finding we can tell so little lose faith in their first opinion of us which naturally was true.

Then these gentlemen are surprised that I write no better because I talk so well. But I have served a long apprenticeship to the one, none to the other. I will write well yet, but never I think so well as I talk for then I feel inspired and the means are pleasant; my voice excites me, my pen never.

I shall by no means be discouraged, nor take what they say for gospel, but try to sift from it all the truth & use it. I feel within myself the strength to dispense with all illusions and I will manifest it. I will stand steady and rejoice in the severest probations!

Then all earth is sanctified

Upsprings Paradise around.

Then shall come the Eden days

Guardian watch from seraph eyes,

Angels on the slanting rays

Voices from the opening skies.

From this spirit land afar

All disturbing force shall flee,

Sin nor toil nor hope, shall mar

Its immortal unity.

Summer 1840

Journal, 1840

It was Thanksgiving day, (Nov., 1831,) and I was obliged to go to church or exceedingly displease my father. I almost always suffered much in church from a feeling of disunion with the hearers and dissent from the preacher; but to-day, more than ever before, the services jarred upon me from their grateful and joyful tone. I was wearied out with mental conflicts, and in a mood of most childish, child-like sadness. I felt within myself great power, and generosity, and tenderness; but it seemed to me as if they were all unrecognized, and as if it was impossible that they should be used in life. I was only one-and-twenty; the past was worthless, the future hopeless; yet I could not remember ever voluntarily to have done a wrong thing, and my aspiration seemed very high. I looked round the church, and envied all the little children; for I supposed they had parents who protected them, so that they could never know this strange anguish, this dread uncertainty. I knew not, then, that none could have any father but God. I knew not, that I was not the only lonely one, that I was not the selected Oedipus, the special victim of an iron law. I was in haste for all to be over, that I might get into the free air.

I walked away over the fields as fast as I could walk. This was my custom at that time, when I could no longer bear the weight of my feelings, and fix my attention on any pursuit; for I do believe I never voluntarily gave way to these thoughts one moment. The force I exerted I think, even now, greater than I ever knew in any other character. But when I could bear myself no longer, I walked many hours, till the anguish was wearied out, and I returned in a state of prayer. To-day all seemed to have reached its height. It seemed as if I could never return to a world in which I had no place,—to the mockery of humanities. I could not act a part, nor seem to live any longer. It was a sad and sallow day of the late autumn. Slow processions of sad clouds were passing over a cold blue sky; the hues of earth were dull, and gray, and brown, with sickly struggles of late green here and there; sometimes a moaning gust of wind drove late, reluctant leaves across the path;—there was no life else. In the sweetness of my present peace, such days seem to me made to tell man the worst of his lot; but still that November wind can bring a chill of memory.

I paused beside a little stream, which I had envied in the merry fulness of its spring life. It was shrunken, voiceless, choked with withered leaves. I marvelled that it did not quite lose itself in the earth. There was no stay for me, and I went on and on, till I came to where the trees were thick about a little pool, dark and silent. I sat down there. I did not think; all was dark, and cold, and still. Suddenly the sun shone out with that transparent sweetness, like the last smile of a dying lover, which it will use when it has been unkind all a cold autumn day. And, even then, passed into my thought a beam from its true sun, from its native sphere, which has never since departed from me. I remembered how, a little child, I had stopped myself one day on the stairs, and asked, how came I here? How is it that I seem to be this Margaret Fuller? What does it mean? What shall I do about it? I remembered all the times and ways in which the same thought had returned. I saw how long it must be before the soul can learn to act under these limitations of time and space, and human nature; but I saw, also, that it MUST do it,—that it must make all this false true,—and sow new