“Do not prescribe how the Divine shall display itself in woman.”

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Vol 2) REVIEW

“If being labeled a transcendentalist means that I have an active mind frequently busy with large topics I hope it is so." - Margaret Fuller Ossoli

I just finished the Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. I think I would like her. Though critics say that the memoir is not always accurate and that no one could have accurately described Margaret Fuller in words anyway, it is a good read. “There are three kinds of people in the world,” Edgar Allen Poe is said to have remarked, “Men, women, and Margaret Fuller.” One man complained that she came with “too many weapons,” inferring I suppose that she was too smart to play the role of a good 19^th century woman in a man’s life.

Margaret Fuller was drowned with her husband and two year old son off the coast of New York City in July of 1850 and her friends, primarily Emerson, hurriedly assembled a memoir to her that became one of the best-selling biographies of the 19^th Century. It is hard to know sometimes if Emerson is using Margaret Fuller as a foil for his own transcendentalist ideals (there is a certain irony to the fact that Emerson’s descriptions of Fuller are a retelling of his assertions about what it means to be a good Transcendentalist) but regardless, Margaret Fuller was a vessel that could hold them with room to spare apparently. Here are the things that Margaret Fuller’s acquaintances wanted people to remember about her. As you read, ask yourself if you know anyone like her.

“The earliest recollection of Margaret is as a schoolmate of my sisters, in Boston. At that period she was considered a prodigy of talent and accomplishment; but a sad feeling prevailed, that she had been overtasked by her father, who wished to train her like a boy, and that she was paying the penalty for undue application, in nearsightedness, awkward manners, extravagant tendencies of thought, and a pedantic style of talk, that made her a butt for the ridicule of frivolous companions.”

 “It was impossible not to admire her fluency and fun; yet, though curiosity was piqued as to this entertaining personage, I never sought an introduction, but, on the contrary, rather shunned encounter with one so armed from head to foot in saucy sprightliness.”

“At first, her vivacity, decisive tone, downrightness, and contempt of conventional standards, continued to repel. She appeared too intense in expression, action, emphasis, to be pleasing, and wanting in that retenue which we associate with delicate dignity. Occasionally, also, words flashed from her of such scathing satire, that prudence counseled the keeping at safe distance from a body so surcharged with electricity.”

“Finally, to the coolly-scanning eye, her friendships wore a look of such romantic exaggeration, that she seemed to walk enveloped in a shining fog of sentimentalism.”

“By power to quicken other minds, she showed how living was her own.”

“She was affluent in historic illustration and literary allusion, as well as in novel hints. She knew how to concentrate into racy phrases the essential truth gathered from wide research, and distilled with patient toil; and by skilful treatment she could make green again the wastes of common-place.”

“Always I found her open-eyed to beauty, fresh for wonder, with wings poised for flight, and fanning the coming breeze of inspiration. Always she seemed to see before her,

  "A shape all light, which with one hand did fling
    Dew on the earth, as if she were the dawn,
  And the invisible rain did ever sing
    A silver music on the mossy lawn."

“She was, indeed, The Friend. This was her vocation. She bore at her girdle a golden key to unlock all caskets of confidence. Into whatever home she entered she brought a benediction of truth, justice, tolerance, and honor; and to everyone who sought her to confess, or seek counsel, she spoke the needed word of stern yet benignant wisdom. To how many was the forming of her acquaintance an era of renovation, of awakening from sloth, indulgence or despair, to heroic mastery of fate, of inward serenity and strength, of new-birth to real self-hood, of catholic sympathies, of energy consecrated to the Supreme Good.

“She felt, too, that Society was not a machine to be put together and set in motion, but a living body, whose breath must be Divine inspiration, and whose healthful growth is only hindered by forcing.”

“She knew, not only theoretically, but practically, how endless are the diversities of human character and of Divine discipline, and she reverenced fellow-spirits too sincerely ever to wish to warp them to her will, or to repress their normal development. She was stern but in one claim, that each should be faithful to apparent leadings of the Truth; “

“In the world of imagination, she had discharged the stormful energy which would have been destructive in actual life. And in thought she had bound herself to the mast while sailing past the Sirens.”

“The characteristic trait of Margaret, to which all her talents and acquirements were subordinate, was sympathy,—universal sympathy. She had that large intelligence and magnanimity which enabled her to comprehend the struggles and triumphs of every form of character. Loving all about her, whether rich or poor, rude or cultivated, as equally formed after a Divine Original, with an equal birth-right of immortal growth, she regarded rather their aspirations than their accomplishments. And this was the source of her marvellous influence. Those who had never thought of their own destiny, nor put faith in their own faculties, found in her society not so much a display of her gifts, as surprising discoveries of their own. She revealed to them the truth, that all can be noble by fidelity to the highest self.”

“I have never met another in whom the inspiring hope of Immortality was so strengthened into profoundest conviction. She did not believe in our future and unending existence,—she knew it, and lived ever in the broad glare of its morning twilight. With a limited income and liberal wants, she was yet generous beyond the bounds of reason. Had the gold of California been all her own, she would have disbursed nine tenths of it in eager and well-directed efforts to stay, or at least diminish, the flood of human misery.”

“She never asked how this would sound, nor whether that would do, nor what would be the effect of saying anything; but simply, 'Is it the truth? Is it such as the public should know?' And if her judgment answered, 'Yes,' she uttered it; no matter what turmoil it might excite, nor what odium it might draw down on her own head. Perfect conscientiousness was an unfailing characteristic of her literary efforts.”

“I think, if she had been born to large fortune, a house of refuge for all female outcasts desiring to return to the ways of Virtue, would have been one of her most cherished and first realized conceptions.”

"Her love of children was one of her most prominent characteristics. The pleasure she enjoyed in their society was fully counterpoised by that she imparted. To them she was never lofty, nor reserved, nor mystical; for no one had ever a more perfect faculty for entering into their sports, their feelings, their enjoyments. She could narrate almost any story in language level to their capacities, and in a manner calculated to bring out their hearty and often boisterously expressed delight.”

Hawthorn may well have been imagining Margaret Fuller when he created the character rof Hester Prynne. Naturally, Margaret herself was not always this prone to eulogize herself. She did have a relatively rubust sense of self-confidence but she by no means saw a saint when she looked in the mirror. Here are some things that she said about herself.

'All the good I have ever done has been by calling on every nature for its highest.”

'My fault is that I think I feel too much. O that my friends would teach me that "simple art of not too much!" How can I expect them to bear the ceaseless eloquence of my nature?'

Further, she seems to have realized at times that her intelligence could be used as a weapon and she seems to have tried to bring it (and the inclination to show off an erudition that, in her case, she had) into subjection to her compassionate instincts. 'Father, let me not injure my fellows during this period of repression,” she wrote in her journal,

“I feel that when we meet my tones are not so sweet as I would have them. O, let me not wound! I, who know so well how wounds can burn and ache, should not inflict them. Let my touch be light and gentle. Let me keep myself uninvaded, but let me not fail to be kind and tender, when need is. Yet I would not assume an overstrained poetic magnanimity. Help me to do just right, and no more. O, make truth profound and simple in me!”

Fuller had one of those minds that was both full and open. By that, I mean she had a lot of material to work with AND she had easy access to it (perhaps too much material and too much access). This reality is something that she sensed made her different. She tried, not always successfully, to avoid thinking that it made her “better.” “There is a mortifying sense,” she writes,

'of having played the Mirabeau [A French orator from the French Revolution] after a talk with a circle of intelligent persons. They come with a store of acquired knowledge and reflection, on the subject in debate, about which I may know little, and have reflected less; yet, by mere apprehensiveness and prompt intuition, I may appear their superior. Spontaneously I appropriate all their material, and turn it to my own ends, as if it was my inheritance from a long train of ancestors. Rays of truth flash out at the moment, and they are startled by the light thrown over their familiar domain. Still they are gainers, for I give them new impulse, and they go on their way rejoicing in the bright glimpses they have caught. I should despise myself, if I purposely appeared thus brilliant, but I am inspired as by a power higher than my own.'

Margaret Fuller often suffered from migraine headaches (perhaps from reading too much) that could literally disable her. Her memoir contains a few of her reflections about the physical infirmities that she felt kept her from accomplishing all that she might wish to accomplish.

'A week of more suffering than I have had for a long time,—from Sunday to Sunday,—headache night and day! And not only there has been no respite, but it has been fixed in one spot—between the eyebrows!—what does that promise?—till it grew real torture. Then it has been depressing to be able to do so little, when there was so much I had at heart to do.

'I go on very moderately, for my strength is not great, and I am connected with one who is anxious that I should not overtask it. Body and mind, I have long required rest and mere amusement, and now obey Nature as much as I can. If she pleases to restore me to an energetic state, she will by-and-by; if not, I can only hope this world will not turn me out of doors too abruptly."

There are over 400 pages just in volume 2 of this memoir so I think I will focus on four specific matters of interest to me; How the Memoir of Margaret Fuller Ossoli might be used to teach Romanticism or Transcendentalism; What the relationship between Transcendentalism and Christian faith might be in the life of an individual like Margaret Fuller; What Margaret Fuller means to the history of male-female relationships in America; and how Margaret Fuller wound up marrying such an unlikely partner.

First, regarding Romanticism.  Margaret Fuller had the opportunity to meet a number of the “neo-Romantics” of her age. She also had a profound intellectual grasp of the writings of the Romantic “greats.” Here is her account of experiencing original manuscripts of Jean Jaques Rousseau:

“To the actually so-called Chamber of Deputies, I was indebted for a sight of the manuscripts of Rousseau treasured in their library. I saw them and touched them,—those manuscripts just as he has celebrated them, written on the fine white paper, tied with ribbon. Yellow and faded age has made them, yet at their touch I seemed to feel the fire of youth, immortally glowing, more and more expansive, with which his soul has pervaded this century. He was the precursor of all we most prize. True, his blood was mixed with madness, and the course of his actual life made some detours through villanous places; but his spirit was intimate with the fundamental truths of human nature, and fraught with prophecy. There is none who has given birth to more life for this age; his gifts are yet untold; they are too present with us; but he who thinks really must often think with Rousseau, and learn him ever more and more. Such is the method of genius,—to ripen fruit for the crowd by those rays of whose heat they complain.

Second, the issue of Transcendentalism. Margaret Fuller was one of the few women allowed into the “old boys network” of the Transcendentalist club in Concord. She was also invited to write for and edit The Dial, the primary publication of the Transcendentalist movement. She was also invited to spend time at Brook Farm, the primary expression of Transcendentalist utopianism.  “If being labeled a transcendentalist means that I have an active mind frequently busy with large topics,” she wrote, “I hope it is so." “I agree with those who think that no true philosophy will try to ignore or annihilate the material part of man,” she explained, “but will rather seek to put it in its place, as servant and minister to the soul.”

Emerson seems to feel the need to explain the nature of the Transcendentalist movement before trying to explain the part that Fuller played in it.

“The summer of 1839 saw the full dawn of the Transcendental movement in New England. The rise of this enthusiasm was as mysterious as that of any form of revival; and only they who were of the faith could comprehend how bright was this morning-time of a new hope. Transcendentalism was an assertion of the inalienable integrity of man, of the immanence of Divinity in instinct.”

“. . .  The result was a vague yet exalting conception of the godlike nature of the human spirit. Transcendentalism, as viewed by its disciples, was a pilgrimage from the idolatrous world of creeds and rituals to the temple of the Living God in the soul. It was a putting to silence of tradition and formulas, that the Sacred Oracle might be heard through intuitions of the single-eyed and pure-hearted. Amidst materialists, zealots, and skeptics, the Transcendentalist believed in perpetual inspiration, the miraculous power of will, and a birthright to universal good. He sought to hold communion face to face with the unnameable Spirit of his spirit, and gave himself up to the embrace of nature's beautiful joy, as a babe seeks the breast of a mother.”

“The past might be well enough for those who, without make-belief, could yet put faith in common dogmas and usages; but for them the matin-bells of a new day were chiming, and the herald-trump of freedom was heard upon the mountains. Hence, leaving ecclesiastical organizations, political parties, and familiar circles, which to them were brown with drought, they sought in covert nooks of friendship for running waters, and fruit from the tree of life. The journal, the letter, became of greater worth than the printed page; for they felt that systematic results were not yet to be looked for, and that in sallies of conjecture, glimpses and flights of ecstasy, the "Newness" lifted her veil to her votaries. Thus, by mere attraction of affinity, grew together the brotherhood of the "Like-minded," as they were pleasantly nicknamed by outsiders, and by themselves, on the ground that no two were of the same opinion. The only password of membership to this association, which had no compact, records, or officers, was a hopeful and liberal spirit; and its chance conventions were determined merely by the desire of the caller for a "talk," or by the arrival of some guest from a distance with a budget of presumptive novelties. Its "symposium" was a picnic, whereto each brought of his gains, as he felt prompted, a bunch of wild grapes from the woods, or bread-corn from his threshing-floor. The tone of the assemblies was cordial welcome for every one's peculiarity; and scholars, farmers, mechanics, merchants, married women, and maidens, met there on a level of courteous respect. The only guest not tolerated was intolerance; though strict justice might add, that these "Illuminati" were as unconscious of their special cant as smokers are of the perfume of their weed, and that a professed declaration of universal independence turned out in practice to be rather oligarchic.”

Understanding the nature of the movement that she felt caught up in makes it easier to understand Margaret Fuller’s sense of her religious views. She seems to have shared the same criticism that forced the revivalists of the 2^nd Great Awakening and the Unitarians like Emerson out of their New England churches. “I have let myself be cheated out of my Sunday, by going to hear Mr. ——,” she says of one of the ministers she went to hear (can you imagine preaching a sermon with Margaret Fuller in the congregation?)

“As he began by reading the first chapter of Isaiah, and the fourth of John's Epistle, I made mental comments with pure delight. "Bring no more vain oblations." "Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." "We know that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because he hath given us of the Spirit." Then pealed the organ, full of solemn assurance. But straightway uprose the preacher to deny mysteries, to deny the second birth, to deny influx, and to renounce the sovereign gift of insight, for the sake of what he deemed a "rational" exercise of will. As he spoke I could not choose but deny him all through, and could scarce refrain from rising to expound, in the light of my own faith, the words of those wiser Jews which had been read. Was it not a sin to exchange friendly greeting as we parted, and yet tell him no word of what was in my mind?

'Still I saw why he looked at things as he did. The old religionists did talk about "grace, conversion," and the like, technically, without striving to enter into the idea, till they quite lost sight of it. Undervaluing the intellect, they became slaves of a sect, instead of organs of the Spirit.

Mr. —— is heard because, though he has not entered into the secret of piety, he wishes to be heard, and with a good purpose,—can make a forcible statement, and kindle himself with his own thoughts.”

“It would be doing injustice to a person like Margaret, always more enthusiastic than philosophical, to attribute to her anything like a system of theology;” says Emerson in the Memoir,  

“for, hopeful, reverent, aspiring, and free from skepticism, she felt too profoundly the vastness of the universe and of destiny ever to presume that with her span rule she could measure the Infinite.”

Emerson records Margaret Fuller’s attempt at establishing a creed for herself. “I see a necessity, in the character of Jesus,” she wrote there with some measure of veiled restraint,

“Why Abraham should have been the founder of his nation, Moses its lawgiver, and David its king and poet. I believe in the genesis of the patriarchs, as given in the Old Testament. I believe in the prophets,—that they foreknew not only what their nation longed for, but what the development of universal Man requires,—a Redeemer, an Atoner, a Lamb of God, taking away the sins of the world. I believe that Jesus came when the time was ripe, and that he was peculiarly a messenger and Son of God. I have nothing to say in denial of the story of his birth; whatever the actual circumstances were, he was born of a Virgin, and the tale expresses a truth of the soul. I have no objection to the miracles, except where they do not happen to please one's feelings. Why should not a spirit, so consecrate and intent, develop new laws, and make matter plastic? I can imagine him walking the waves, without any violation of my usual habits of thought. He could not remain in the tomb, they say; certainly not,—death is impossible to such a being. He remained upon earth; most true, and all who have met him since on the way, have felt their hearts burn within them. He ascended to heaven; surely, how could it be otherwise?”

'Would I could express with some depth what I feel as to religion in my very soul; it would be a clear note of calm assurance. But for the present this must suffice with regard to Christ. I am grateful here, as everywhere, when Spirit bears fruit in fulness; it attests the justice of aspiration, it kindles faith, it rebukes sloth, it enlightens resolve. But so does a beautiful infant. Christ's life is only one modification of the universal harmony. I will not loathe sects, perpersuasions, systems, though I cannot abide in them one moment, for I see that by most men they are still needed. To them their banners, their tents; let them be Fire-worshippers, Platonists, Christians; let them live in the shadow of past revelations. But, oh, Father of our souls, the One, let me seek Thee! I would seek Thee in these forms, and in proportion as they reveal Thee, they teach me to go beyond themselves. I would learn from them all, looking only to Thee! But let me set no limits from the past, to my own soul, or to any soul.”

What appears from this account of faith is a rather Quaker approach to revealed religion – a refusal to either deny the revelatory nature of a past not lived or to prohibit oneself from the hope of experiencing God themselves for themselves. “Ages may not produce one worthy to loose the shoes of the Prophet of Nazareth;” Fuller writes,

“yet there will surely be another manifestation of that Word which was in the beginning. And all future manifestations will come, like Christianity, "not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfill." The very greatness of this manifestation demands a greater.”

 No religion can perhaps long sustain an assertion that their great prophet is just the latest in what will be an endless parade of great prophets (Maybe Buddhism can). I suspect that on this issue, Margaret Fuller would fail to obtain membership in any self-respecting evangelical church today. I wonder if that would be their loss or gain? How disqualifying this openness to another Christ would be in heaven will be for heaven to decide I guess.

My third theme will come as no surprise to those who are familiar with Fuller’s primary literary work, Women in the 19^th Century. Fuller was a proponent of change in the relationships between men and women. She made a clear argument that men and women were different along a spectrum and were not so different as to be regarded two classifications of a species. “Society is now so complex, that it is no longer possible to educate woman merely as woman;” she wrote in her manifesto,

“The tasks which come to her hand are so various, and so large a proportion of women are thrown entirely upon their own resources. I admit that this is not their state of perfect development; but it seems as if heaven, having so long issued its edict in poetry and religion, without securing intelligent obedience, now commanded the world in prose, to take a high and rational view. The lesson reads to me thus:—

'Sex, like rank, wealth, beauty, or talent, is but an accident of birth. As you would not educate a soul to be an aristocrat, so do not to be a woman. A general regard to her usual sphere is dictated in the economy of nature. You need never enforce these provisions rigorously.

“Man, do not prescribe how the Divine shall display itself in woman. Woman, do not expect to see all of God in man.”

"Let them be Sea Captains!" she famously said of of women's sphere - though friends would often note that she expected men to be chivalrous with her. Of the institution of marriage, Fuller asserted that “a man should deserve [his wife’s] love as an inheritance, rather than seize and guard it like a prey.”

Which, brings us to my final topic; Fuller’s marriage to Giovanni Angelo Ossoli in Italy. By Fuller’s own reckoning, it was a strange match. Fuller was probably the most educated female intellectual America had yet produced and Giovanni Ossoli was almost entirely without an education and could not speak English. Because of legal and financial issues relating to Ossoli’s family inheritance, the two kept their marriage a secret even in Italy until it became clear that he would never receive any inheritance whatsoever (he came from a Catholic family that would have probably excluded him from it for marrying a Protestant). “How will it affect you to know that I have united my destiny with that of an obscure young man,” Fuller wrote her mother of her marriage, “—younger than myself; a person of no intellectual culture, and in whom, in short, you will see no reason for my choosing;”

Here is what the memoir records from Fuller’s letters. Use your own intuitions about the life of the mind and the soul and the body. Where do you think this decision came from? We start with excerpts from Fuller’s letters explaining herself and her relationship to Ossoli to her friends and family back home.

“He is not in any respect such a person as people in general would expect to find with me. He had no instructor except an old priest, who entirely neglected his education; and of all that is contained in books he is absolutely ignorant, and he has no enthusiasm of character.”

“Amid many ills and cares, we have had much joy together, in the sympathy with natural beauty,—with our child,—with all that is innocent and sweet.”

“I do not know whether he will always love me so well, for I am the elder, and the difference will become, in a few years, more perceptible than now. But life is so uncertain, and it is so necessary to take good things with their limitations, that I have not thought it worth while to calculate too curiously.”

“I presume that, to many of my friends, he will be nothing, and they will not understand that I should have life in common with him. But I do not think he will care;—he has not the slightest tinges of self-love.”

“Yet I feel great confidence in the permanence of his love. It has been unblemished so far, under many trials; especially as I have been more desponding and unreasonable, in many ways, than I ever was before, and more so, I hope, than I ever shall be again. But at all such times, he never had a thought except to sustain and cheer me. He is capable of the sacred love,—the love passing that of woman. He showed it to his father, to Rome, to me. Now he loves his child in the same way. I think he will be an excellent father, though he could not speculate about it, nor, indeed, about anything.”

“The friction that I have seen mar so much the domestic happiness of others does not occur with us, or, at least, has not occurred. Then, there is the pleasure of always being at hand to help one another.”

“My love for Ossoli is most pure and tender, nor has any one, except my mother or little children, loved me so genuinely as he does. To some, I have been obliged to make myself known; others have loved me with a mixture of fancy and enthusiasm, excited by my talent at embellishing life. But Ossoli loves me from simple affinity;—he loves to be with me, and to serve and soothe me.”

“Ossoli, too, will be a good father. He has very little of what is called intellectual development, but unspoiled instincts, affections pure and constant, and a quiet sense of duty, which, to me,—who have seen much of the great faults in characters of enthusiasm and genius,—seems of highest value.”

“What shall I say of my child? All might seem hyperbole, even to my dearest mother. In him I find satisfaction, for the first time, to the deep wants of my heart. Yet, thinking of those other sweet ones fled [she is referring to children in her life that she had been attached to but who had died i.e. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s son, Waldo], I must look upon him as a treasure only lent.”

I can only speculate but it seems to me that no matter how powerful the intellect may be in a person, it never weakens the strength of other human desires and instinct. Intellect may distract but it never eradicates all the other aspects of personality. “Once I was almost all intellect;” Fuller wrote from Italy,

“now I am almost all feeling. Nature vindicates her rights, and I feel all Italy glowing beneath the Saxon crust. This cannot last long; I shall burn to ashes if all this smoulders here much longer. I must die if I do not burst forth in genius or heroism.”

“Yes! I am weary, and faith soars and sings no more. Nothing good of me is left except at the bottom of the heart, a melting tenderness:”

For even Margaret Fuller, life as a mind sitting on the shelf of a woman’s body was not enough. She needed all those things that all people need. Tenderness. Affection. Love. Intimacy. A child. These were not things that more encyclopedias or conversations with the men who wrote them could give her. In the end, Margaret Fuller was just … human.  I think she can be forgiven for that, and should be.

“Meanwhile, love me all you can; let me feel, that, amid the fearful agitations of the world, there are pure hands, with healthful, even pulse, stretched out toward me, if I claim their grasp.” – Letter from Margaret Fuller to her mother.

I for one would take her hand. It makes me sad that her family was lost before it had a chance to prove to people that it would have lasted in spite of its challenges.

Question for Comment: In this modern world of facebook and email, do you think that it is more or less likely that there will be anyone around with the ability to say who we were after we die?