The Complete Works of Margaret Fuller

Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Summer on the Lakes in 1843, Essays, Memoirs, Reviews, Narratives, Poems & Biography by Julia Ward Howe

Margaret Fuller, W. H. Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Freeman Clarke, Julia Ward Howe

• Publisher: Madison & Adams Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9788026884910
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Féminisme et théorie féministe

Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1810-1850) was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first full-time American female book reviewer in journalism. Fuller was an advocate of women's rights and, in particular, women's education and the right to employment. Her book "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" is considered the first major feminist work in the United States. She encouraged many other reforms in society, including prison reform and the emancipation of slaves in the United States. Many other advocates for women's rights and feminism, including Susan B. Anthony, cite Fuller as a source of inspiration. Contents: Woman in the Nineteenth CenturySummer on the Lakes in 1843MemoirsReviewsNarrativeEssaysPoemsBiography by Julia Ward Howe

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

Table of Contents

YOUTH. AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

I. YOUTH.

PARENTS.

DEATH IN THE HOUSE.

OVERWORK.

BOOKS.

FIRST FRIEND.

SCHOOL-LIFE.

SELF-CULTURE.

LIFE IN CAMBRIDGE.

II. CAMBRIDGE

I.

II.

III.

IV.

III. GROTON AND PROVIDENCE.

SAD WELCOME HOME.

OCCUPATIONS.

RICHTER.

MISS MARTINEAU.

ILLNESS

DEATH OF HER FATHER.

TRIAL.

BIRTH-DAY.

DEATH IN LIFE.

LITERATURE.

FAREWELL TO GROTON.

WINTER IN BOSTON.

PROVIDENCE.

SCHOOL EXPERIENCES.

PERSONS.

ART.

FANNY KEMBLE.

MAGNANIMITY.

SPIRITUAL LIFE.

FAREWELL TO SUMMER.

IV. VISITS TO CONCORD.

ARCANA.

DÆMONOLOGY.

TEMPERAMENT.

SELF-ESTEEM.

BOOKS.

CRITICISM.

GEORGE SAND, AGAIN.

ALFRED DE VIGNY.

BÉRANGER.

NATURE.

ART.

'CRAWFORD'S ORPHEUS.

LETTERS.

FRIENDSHIP.

PROBLEMS OF LIFE.

WOMAN, OR ARTIST?

HEROISM.

TRUTH.

ECSTASY.

CONVERSATION.

V. CONVERSATIONS IN BOSTON.

CONVERSATIONS ON THE FINE ARTS.

VI. JAMAICA PLAIN

I. FIRST IMPRESSIONS.

II. A CLUE.

III. TRANSCENDENTALISM.

IV. GENIUS.

V. THE DIAL.

VI. THE WOMAN.

VII. THE FRIEND.

VIII. SOCIALISM.

IX. CREDO.

X. SELF-SOVEREIGNTY.

VII. NEW YORK

LEAVING HOME.

THE HIGHLANDS.

WOMAN.

THE TRIBUNE AND HORACE GREELEY.

SOCIETY.

VIII. EUROPE

LONDON.

EDINBURGH.——DE QUINCEY.

CHALMERS.

A NIGHT ON BEN LOMOND.

JOANNA BAILLIE.—HOWITTS.—SMITH.

CARLYLE.

CARLYLE, AGAIN.

PARIS.

RACHEL.

MARGARET FULLER.

FOURIER.

ROUSSEAU.

ROME.

AMERICANS IN ITALY.

THE WIFE AND MOTHER.[A]

THE PRIVATE MARRIAGE.

AQUILA AND RIETI.

CALM AFTER STORM.

MARGARET AND HER PEERS.

MARGARET.

FLORENCE.

HOMEWARD.

ELIZABETH BARRETT.

IX. HOMEWARD

SPRING-TIME.

OMENS.

ELIZABETH BARRETT.

THE VOYAGE.[A]

THE WRECK.

YOUTH.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

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* * * * *

"Aus Morgenduft gewebt und Sonnenklarheit
Der Dichtung Schleir aus der Hand der Wahrheit."

GOETHE.

"The million stars which tremble
O'er the deep mind of dauntless infancy."

TENNYSON.

"Wie leicht ward er dahin gefragen,
Was war dem Glücklichen zu schwer!
Wie tanzte vor des Lebens Wagen
Die luftige Begleitung her!
Die Liebe mit dem süssen Lohne,
Das Glück mit seinem gold'nen Kranz,
Der Ruhm mit seiner Sternenkrone,
Die Wahrheit in der Sonne Glanz."

SCHILLER

What wert thou then? A child most infantine,
Yet wandering far beyond that innocent age,
In all but its sweet looks and mien divine;
Even then, methought, with the world's tyrant rage
A patient warfare thy young heart did wage,
When those soft eyes of scarcely conscious thought
Some tale, or thine own fancies, would engage
To overflow with tears, or converse fraught
With passion o'er their depths its fleeting light had wrought.'

SHELLE

"And I smiled, as one never smiles but once;
Then first discovering my own aim's extent,
Which sought to comprehend the works of God.
And God himself, and all God's intercourse
With the human mind."

BROWNING.

I.

YOUTH.

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* * * * *

'Tieck, who has embodied so many Runic secrets, explained to me what I have often felt toward myself, when he tells of the poor changeling, who, turned from the door of her adopted home, sat down on a stone and so pitied herself that she wept. Yet me also, the wonderful bird, singing in the wild forest, has tempted on, and not in vain.'

Thus wrote Margaret in the noon of life, when looking back through
youth to the "dewy dawn of memory." She was the eldest child of
Timothy Fuller and Margaret Crane, and was born in Cambridge-Port,
Massachusetts, on the 23d of May, 1810.

Among her papers fortunately remains this unfinished sketch of youth, prepared by her own hand, in 1840, as the introductory chapter to an autobiographical romance.

PARENTS.

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'My father was a lawyer and a politician. He was a man largely endowed with that sagacious energy, which the state of New England society, for the last half century, has been so well fitted to develop. His father was a clergyman, settled as pastor in Princeton, Massachusetts, within the bounds of whose parish-farm was Wachuset. His means were small, and the great object of his ambition was to send his sons to college. As a boy, my father was taught to think only of preparing himself for Harvard University, and when there of preparing himself for the profession of Law. As a Lawyer, again, the ends constantly presented were to work for distinction in the community, and for the means of supporting a family. To be an honored citizen, and to have a home on earth, were made the great aims of existence. To open the deeper fountains of the soul, to regard life here as the prophetic entrance to immortality, to develop his spirit to perfection,—motives like these had never been suggested to him, either by fellow-beings or by outward circumstances. The result was a character, in its social aspect, of quite the common sort. A good son and brother, a kind neighbor, an active man of business—in all these outward relations he was but one of a class, which surrounding conditions have made the majority among us. In the more delicate and individual relations, he never approached but two mortals, my mother and myself.

'His love for my mother was the green spot on which he stood apart from the common-places of a mere bread-winning, bread-bestowing existence. She was one of those fair and flower-like natures, which sometimes spring up even beside the most dusty highways of life—a creature not to be shaped into a merely useful instrument, but bound by one law with the blue sky, the dew, and the frolic birds. Of all persons whom I have known, she had in her most of the angelic,—of that spontaneous love for every living thing, for man, and beast, and tree, which restores the golden age.'

DEATH IN THE HOUSE.

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'My earliest recollection is of a death,—the death of a sister, two years younger than myself. Probably there is a sense of childish endearments, such as belong to this tie, mingled with that of loss, of wonder, and mystery; but these last are prominent in memory. I remember coming home and meeting our nursery-maid, her face streaming with tears. That strange sight of tears made an indelible impression. I realize how little I was of stature, in that I looked up to this weeping face;—and it has often seemed since, that—full-grown for the life of this earth, I have looked up just so, at times of threatening, of doubt, and distress, and that just so has some being of the next higher order of existences looked down, aware of a law unknown to me, and tenderly commiserating the pain I muse endure in emerging from my ignorance.

'She took me by the hand and led me into a still and dark chamber,—then drew aside the curtain and showed me my sister. I see yet that beauty of death! The highest achievements of sculpture are only the reminder of its severe sweetness. Then I remember the house all still and dark,—the people in their black clothes and dreary faces,—the scent of the newly-made coffin,—my being set up in a chair and detained by a gentle hand to hear the clergyman,—the carriages slowly going, the procession slowly doling out their steps to the grave. But I have no remembrance of what I have since been told I did,—insisting, with loud cries, that they should not put the body in the ground. I suppose that my emotion was spent at the time, and so there was nothing to fix that moment in my memory.

'I did not then, nor do I now, find any beauty in these ceremonies. What had they to do with the sweet playful child? Her life and death were alike beautiful, but all this sad parade was not. Thus my first experience of life was one of death. She who would have been the companion of my life was severed from me, and I was left alone. This has made a vast difference in my lot. Her character, if that fair face promised right, would have been soft, graceful and lively: it would have tempered mine to a gentler and more gradual course.

OVERWORK.

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'My father,—all whose feelings were now concentred on me,—instructed me himself. The effect of this was so far good that, not passing through the hands of many ignorant and weak persons as so many do at preparatory schools, I was put at once under discipline of considerable severity, and, at the same time, had a more than ordinarily high standard presented to me. My father was a man of business, even in literature; he had been a high scholar at college, and was warmly attached to all he had learned there, both from the pleasure he had derived in the exercise of his faculties and the associated memories of success and good repute. He was, beside, well read in French literature, and in English, a Queen Anne's man. He hoped to make me the heir of all he knew, and of as much more as the income of his profession enabled him to give me means of acquiring. At the very beginning, he made one great mistake, more common, it is to be hoped, in the last generation, than the warnings of physiologists will permit it to be with the next. He thought to gain time, by bringing forward the intellect as early as possible. Thus I had tasks given me, as many and various as the hours would allow, and on subjects beyond my age; with the additional disadvantage of reciting to him in the evening, after he returned from his office. As he was subject to many interruptions, I was often kept up till very late; and as he was a severe teacher, both from his habits of mind and his ambition for me, my feelings were kept on the stretch till the recitations were over. Thus frequently, I was sent to bed several hours too late, with nerves unnaturally stimulated. 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, which at the time prevented the harmonious development of my bodily powers and checked my growth, while, later, they induced continual headache, weakness and nervous affections, of all kinds. As these again re-acted on the brain, giving undue force to every thought and every feeling, there was finally produced a state of being both too active and too intense, which wasted my constitution, and will bring me,—even although I have learned to understand and regulate my now morbid temperament,—to a premature grave.

'No one understood this subject of health then. No one knew why this child, already kept up so late, was still unwilling to retire. My aunts cried out upon the "spoiled child, the most unreasonable child that ever was,—if brother could but open his eyes to see it,—who was never willing to go to bed." They did not know that, so soon as the light was taken away, she seemed to see colossal faces advancing slowly towards her, the eyes dilating, and each feature swelling loathsomely as they came, till at last, when they were about to close upon her, she started up with a shriek which drove them away, but only to return when she lay down again. They did not know that, when at last she went to sleep, it was to dream of horses trampling over her, and to awake once more in fright; or, as she had just read in her Virgil, of being among trees that dripped with blood, where she walked and walked and could not get out, while the blood became a pool and plashed over her feet, and rose higher and higher, till soon she dreamed it would reach her lips. No wonder the child arose and walked in her sleep, moaning all over the house, till once, when they heard her, and came and waked her, and she told what she had dreamed, her father sharply bid her "leave off thinking of such nonsense, or she would be crazy,"—never knowing that he was himself the cause of all these horrors of the night. Often she dreamed of following to the grave the body of her mother, as she had done that of her sister, and woke to find the pillow drenched in tears. These dreams softened her heart too much, and cast a deep shadow over her young days; for then, and later, the life of dreams,—probably because there was in it less to distract the mind from its own earnestness,—has often seemed to her more real, and been remembered with more interest, than that of waking hours.

'Poor child! Far remote in time, in thought, from that period, I look back on these glooms and terrors, wherein I was enveloped, and perceive that I had no natural childhood.'

BOOKS.

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'Thus passed my first years. My mother was in delicate health, and much absorbed in the care of her younger children. In the house was neither dog nor bird, nor any graceful animated form of existence. I saw no persons who took my fancy, and real life offered no attraction. Thus my already over-excited mind found no relief from without, and was driven for refuge from itself to the world of books. I was taught Latin and English grammar at the same time, and began to read Latin at six years old, after which, for some years, I read it daily. In this branch of study, first by my father, and afterwards by a tutor, I was trained to quite a high degree of precision. I was expected to understand the mechanism of the language thoroughly, and in translating to give the thoughts in as few well-arranged words as possible, and without breaks or hesitation,—for with these my father had absolutely no patience.

'Indeed, he demanded accuracy and clearness in everything: you must not speak, unless you can make your meaning perfectly intelligible to the person addressed; must not express a thought, unless you can give a reason for it, if required; must not make a statement, unless sure of all particulars—such were his rules. "But," "if," "unless," "I am mistaken," and "it may be so," were words and phrases excluded from the province where he held sway. Trained to great dexterity in artificial methods, accurate, ready, with entire command of his resources, he had no belief in minds that listen, wait, and receive. He had no conception of the subtle and indirect motions of imagination and feeling. His influence on me was great, and opposed to the natural unfolding of my character, which was fervent, of strong grasp, and disposed to infatuation, and self-forgetfulness. He made the common prose world so present to me, that my natural bias was controlled. I did not go mad, as many would do, at being continually roused from my dreams. I had too much strength to be crushed,—and since I must put on the fetters, could not submit to let them impede my motions. My own world sank deep within, away from the surface of my life; in what I did and said I learned to have reference to other minds. But my true life was only the dearer that it was secluded and veiled over by a thick curt...

Table of contents

• The Complete Works of Margaret Fuller
• Table of Contents
• Woman in the Nineteenth Century
• Summer on the Lakes in 1843
• Reviews.
• Narratives and Essays
• Poems
• Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli
• Biography of Margaret Fuller