Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century: A Reading
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21146/2074-4870-2021-21-2-90-103Keywords:
Margaret Fuller, “Woman in the Nineteenth Century”, “The Great Lawsuit: Man versus Men. Woman versus Women”, the equality of women, American Transcendentalism, moral universalism, I. Kant, E. Swedenborg, Ch. Fourier, J.W. von Goethe, R.W. EmersonAbstract
The article analyzes the book on the equality of women “Woman in the Nineteenth Century” (1845) written by Margaret Fuller (1810–1850), an outstanding American romantic, to elaborate the ideas she had expressed in the essay “The Great Lawsuit: Man versus Men. Woman versus Women” (1843). The author compares these two works and shows their common conceptual ground, as well as the development of Fuller’s views that grew in scope and radicalism. The book is analyzed in its cultural and historical context as a religious and philosophical work that gave a unique expression to the ideas of American Transcendentalism: Fuller was the first to apply its fundamental principle of self-reliance to women and created in the cultural discourse the image of “woman thinking”, complementing thus the image of “man thinking” elaborated in the works of Emerson and other transcendentalists. The author shows that Fuller’s ethical conception drew on the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Christianity, mystical teachings (Swedenborg), utopian socialism (Fourier), Goethe, European romanticism and points out that transcendental moral universalism was Fuller’s basic premise. The article demonstrates that in her book Fuller combined ethical theory with a criticism of the social reality, norms and morals in the USA as unjust (particularly concerning women’s rights, slavery, rights of the underprivileged) and stressed the significance of justice as a moral value. A special attention is drawn to the peculiarities of the book as a publicistic work, in which Fuller develops her ethical ideas through forms of literary expression: sermon, artistic imagination (characters, dialogues), works by other writers in a discussion on the place of women in the history of cultures.