Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,00, University of Göttingen, language: English, abstract: "Let them be sea-captains, if you will", Margaret Fuller stated in her main work Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Woman 346). Although even nowadays there may be only few female sea-captains, the quoted statement would hardly provoke anyone, at least not someone in our contemporary western culture. However, when regarded in its historical context, two questions arise: Firstly, what underlying gender concept encouraged Fuller to make such a statement, in "a time of excessive gender polarization" (Bomarito (vol2) 1), a time in which the ideal of domesticity and Republican Motherhood (Freedman 25) determined the role of woman? And secondly, how did antebellum American society react to such statements? The first question will be the main issue of part III, the main part of my work. I will begin with Fuller's general gender concept that involves ideas of androgynity and the "degendering" (Davis 182) of language. Next, the major influences on her concept, namely those of transcendentalism (with special consideration of Emerson), Goethe, Fourier and Swedenborg will be dealt with. Lastly, I will consider how Fuller applied her concept to the specific fields outlined in chapter II, that is, marriage, education and economy. I will concentrate on her main work Woman in the Nineteenth Century because Fuller describes her gender concept there in most detail, whereas her other works such as Summer on the Lakes do not contribute much additional information that is of special significance for the understanding of her gender concept. This is especially true in the case of her Memoirs, which was heavily edited and censored by Emerson and others. It rather distorted Fuller's reputation, as Urbanski states (5). Therefore I will only occasionally refer to them, whenever they provide further information that is relevant to my topic. Regarding t

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,00, University of Göttingen, language: English, abstract: "Let them be sea-captains, if you will", Margaret Fuller stated in her main work Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Woman 346). Although even nowadays there may be only few female sea-captains, the quoted statement would hardly provoke anyone, at least not someone in our contemporary western culture. However, when regarded in its historical context, two questions arise: Firstly, what underlying gender concept encouraged Fuller to make such a statement, in "a time of excessive gender polarization" (Bomarito (vol2) 1), a time in which the ideal of domesticity and Republican Motherhood (Freedman 25) determined the role of woman? And secondly, how did antebellum American society react to such statements? The first question will be the main issue of part III, the main part of my work. I will begin with Fuller's general gender concept that involves ideas of androgynity and the "degendering" (Davis 182) of language. Next, the major influences on her concept, namely those of transcendentalism (with special consideration of Emerson), Goethe, Fourier and Swedenborg will be dealt with. Lastly, I will consider how Fuller applied her concept to the specific fields outlined in chapter II, that is, marriage, education and economy. I will concentrate on her main work Woman in the Nineteenth Century because Fuller describes her gender concept there in most detail, whereas her other works such as Summer on the Lakes do not contribute much additional information that is of special significance for the understanding of her gender concept. This is especially true in the case of her Memoirs, which was heavily edited and censored by Emerson and others. It rather distorted Fuller's reputation, as Urbanski states (5). Therefore I will only occasionally refer to them, whenever they provide further information that is relevant to my topic. Regarding the second question, I will illustrate the historical and cultural background first against which Fuller placed her gender concept, in order to clarify why her "idea of woman" (W 305) was considered provoking and unconventional in antebellum America. I will deal with the traditional gender concept, along with its ideals such as femininity, Republican Motherhood and domesticity. Then, I will describe the effect this concept had on marriage, evangelical movements, education and economy, and also with what is considered the initiation of the first women's rights movement in America, the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.

This is the biography of American writer, adventurer and social critic Margaret Fuller.

Writing in an age when the call for the rights of man had brought revolution to America and France, Mary Wollstonecraft produced her own declaration of female independence in 1792. Passionate and forthright, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman attacked the prevailing view of docile, decorative femininity and instead laid out the principles of emancipation: an equal education for girls and boys, an end to prejudice, and the call for women to become defined by their profession, not their partner. Mary Wollstonecrafts work was received with a mixture of admiration and outrageWalpole called her a hyena in petticoatsyet it established her as the mother of modern feminism.

Essays on the American Transcendentalist

Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1810-1850), commonly known as Margaret Fuller, was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Volume Two. -- "The New York Times Book Review"

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850), a pioneering gender theorist, transcendentalist, journalist, and literary critic, was one of the most well-known and highly regarded feminist intellectuals of nineteenth-century America. With her contemporaries Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, she was one of the predominant writers of the Transcendentalist movement, and she aligned herself in both her public and private life with the European revolutionary fervor of the 1840s. She traveled to Italy as a foreign correspondent for the New York Tribune to cover the nascent revolutions, pursuing the transnational ideal awakened in her youth by a classical education in European languages and a Romantic curiosity about other cultures, traditions, and identities. This volume is a collaboration of international scholars who, from varied fields and approaches, assess Fuller’s genius and character. Treating the last several years of Margaret Fuller’s short life, these essays offer a truly international discussion of Fuller’s unique cultural, political, and personal achievements. From the origins and articulations of Fuller’s cosmopolitanism to her examination of “the woman question,” and from her fascination with the European “other” to her candid perception of imperial America from abroad, they ponder what such an extraordinary woman meant to America, and also to Italy and Europe, during her lifetime and continuing to the present.