The Transcendental Period

Woman of Enlightment: Sarah Margaret Fuller
Most people have learned of the Transcendental period through their time spent in American Literature in High School, but it was more than a period for literature, it was also a period of philosophy. The Transcendental period took place in the nineteenth century that taught abstract and Spiritual matters were more real than what was seen by the natural eye. It was based off of Romanticism in Europe during the eighteenth century and Plato’s idealism. Transcendentalists believed that one could find enlightment in themselves and not just in the church. They were skeptical of organized religion and criticized society’s will to conform. Transcendentalists also believed in becoming one with nature and
trusting oneself, or having intuition.
The ones well-known in this era were: Henry David Thoreau, an abolitionist and wrote Resistance to Civil Government which was a call for the masses to stand up for the injustices in their society, Theodor Parker who was also an abolitionist as well as a reformer of the Unitarian Church.
His speeches also later inspired Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. Amos Bronson Alcott, the founder of the Concord School of Philosophy and the father of writer, Louisa Alcott who wrote Little Women. Frederic Henry Hedge, the founder of the Transcendentalist Club. Ralph Emerson was known as the father of the philosophical movement. He was also the writer of Self-Reliance which was an essay that taught the reader to trust themselves. Lastly, there was Sarah Margaret Fuller. Through research on what philosopher to write about, there were more results for male philosophers than female. It took an extensive and specific search to find women theorists. One person who stood out was Sarah Margaret Fuller. A person new to philosophy may not know of her, but she was one of the most influential women of the nineteenth
century.
There were many events in her life that inspired her aspirations in life. Her father, Timothy Fuller who was a congressman and speaker of the House for Massachusetts wanted a boy to continue his legacy. Although he had a girl instead, he treated her no different and gave her a rigorous education. By the age of six, Sarah was reading advanced books by writers like Horace and Virgil written in Latin. She studied from the early mornings to late at night and at the age of fifteen, began reading literary and philosophical works written in multiple languages.
When her family moved to Cambridge, Massachusettes in the early 1830’s, she met some the “celebrities” of the Transcendental movement.
Some of these people consisted of Thoreau, Emerson, Bronson Alcott and W. H Channing. They were impressed by her and Thomas Carlyle described her as having a “predetermination to eat this big universe as her oyster or egg,” meaning she had a drive to know everything she can about the world.(Capper 10) Philosopher of transcendentalism and individualism, Ralph Waldo Wilson even acquired her as a student.
It was through her precociousness; she found it hard to relate to other young woman. Some would have described her as arrogant. Transcendentalists believed that social reform started with the need to understand the human condition and bring them up to the highest order of nature, but Fuller struggled with this concept. She wrote to Emerson that she couldn’t see the divinity in herself, yet she was more divine than anyone else around her. Some would say she was just being egotistic, but maybe she felt this way because she wasn’t up to her personal level of
perfection. After her father passed away in 1835, Fuller took to teaching as a way to make a living. She hated this because she felt like it limited her abilities. She taught for a while at Alcott’s Progressive Temple in Boston and then in Rhode Island. She felt shut out from the academic circle in Boston. She recorded in her diary, that she would never write like a woman, but like a man respected for his knowledge. She found it difficult to show her femininity in public. She soon returned to Boston, and advanced her career as well as put her plan for social reform into action. In 1839, she published her translation of Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of His Life. The next year, she joined The Dial, a semi-journal of the Transcendentalists. While working for The Dial, she wrote an essay called The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Man. Women versus Women where she demanded equality for women. Fuller called out the lie that America was living under saying, “All men were created equal,” when in reality women were not treated as equals, but as slaves instead. Fuller also gave references to John Winthrop and Plato with whom her audience were familiar with. Rebecca Rix from Reed College wrote an analysis on the essay called Sarah Margaret Fuller: performing Civic Equality. Rix mentioned that the title made one think of a court room and it called the readers to be the judge if the country was living by its laws or not. In an article called What Sarah Margaret Fuller did for Feminism written by Phyllis Cole, Cole celebrates the female philosopher even though there isn’t much written about her. She compares her with Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of Mary Sheller and Fuller’s predecessor who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Cole—similar to Rebecca Rix—gives praise to The Great Lawsuit because during the time period it was written, the law said that a woman could “sue or be sued.” and Fuller made sure to make her claim confrontational.
During this time, she also held conversations with women to discuss intellectual topics they weren’t allowed to talk about during social events such as ethics, Greek mythology and poetry. Some such as Harriet Martineau, a social theorist and writer of the time, thought that the conversations weren’t progressive because they were not acting on these social changes, but it was proven that the same women later went on to fight for women’s rights and abolition. In a letter to Sophia Ripley, Fuller mentioned how women were only taught to be seen and not think. She perceived herself a role model for the women in the group. In 1846 she wrote a book called, Summer on the Lakes which accounted a trip she embarked on. She gave a subjective expression of the land and even wrote about the mistreatment of the Indians. She sympathized with them and worried about living up to Eastern standards of culture and losing the uniqueness of the West. It was after this book was published that she received an offer to work at the New York Tribune and later revised and published an extended essay of The Great Lawsuit.
Her time with the philosophers and teaching other women gave her ideas that helped in her theories. Thanks to her treatment as an individual and not just a woman, she believed that souls were genderless. Emerson and Kant’s ideas about self-efficiency, individualism and absolute optimism were applied to her novel, Woman of the Nineteenth Century. It is one of her most well-known works. In the novel she is quoted in saying, “What Woman 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.” She wanted woman to break free of the mold they have been set in and be given equal opportunity.
Fuller’s beliefs were the basis for Feminism. She helped influence the Woman rights Movement in 1846. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady, activists of the Women’s Rights Movement, even praised her in their book, History of Women in Suffrage. They called her a woman who, "possessed more influence on the thought of American women than any woman previous to her time." She encouraged women to enhance their knowledge of the world around them. Fuller called for social justice against the oppression of women and led by example of being the first woman to have opportunities given to her. She was the first woman accepted in Harvard’s library for research. She was the first woman editor for a profound newspaper.
Sarah Margaret Fuller stands out as not only a woman of the Transcendental period, but also a woman of Feminism. She inspired the woman that came after her such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady. She used Transcendentalism as a way to uplift women, saying they have a more significant role and should be treated as equals. She once said, “Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man. no purely feminine woman,” meaning no one was constricted to what was expected of them because of their gender, She believed a woman could strive for any career she wished. She was inspired by her colleagues and used their ideals such as individualism to help support her works and share her own ideals with the world.