Unit 8
CONSTRUCTING AMERICAN IDENTITY/3
MARGARET FULLER
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)
Texts to read: Fuller, extract from “The Great Lawsuit” (Norton 1)
See also Woman in the 19th Century at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/8642 or at
http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/fuller/woman1.html.
“Declaration of Sentiments” at http://www.nps.gov/archive/wori/declaration.htm
Netting: Ch 3(A): A.3.3 (Changes in Gender Dynamics), A.5.1 (Ed. Reform), A.5.3 (Am
Transcendentalism), Ch 3(B): B.2 (Democratic Vistas), B.2.3 (Fuller)
***
Sarah Ann Clarke’s etching from Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes (1843; 1844)
1
1. How did travelers look at American women in the first half of the 19th century? Pick out
only one author from “Women in America” at
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/detoc/fem/home.htm
and make a short summary of his/her account. Note if s/he made any observation that reminds
you of Fuller’s description of American women.
2. Margaret Fuller was an exceptional intellectual and a socially responsible individual whose
work as writer, translator, journalist, and educator is considered preeminent. Based on
the Recommended Web Resources in the corresponding units of Netting America, briefly
describe her achievements in at least one of her many capacities (focusing, e.g., on the
innovative pedagogy of her “conversation classes,” on her pioneering travel writing in
Summer on the Lakes, etc).
2
3. “The Great Lawsuit,” Margaret Fuller’s 1843 essay gave a penetrating
critique of American patriarchy that prefigured the “Declaration of Sentiments,”
http://www.nps.gov/archive/wori/declaration.htm) the famous
women’s rights document of 1848 signed at Seneca Falls, New York. Compare the two texts
and note down how each makes a case against male oppression.
“The Great Lawsuit”
Men depriving women of suffrage
“Declaration of Sentiments”
Same “abuses and usurpasions” in detail:
suffrage, etc.” He has never permitted her to
exercise her inalienable right to the elective
franchise
S: “He has taken from her all rights in
property, even to the wages she earns.”
Having no legal protection
Men reducing women to status of children to
be subjugated and protected; reduced her to a
“plaything” (1521)
”He has made her, morally, an irresponsible
being”
Male opposition to women’s intellectual
work, including writing (1519)
„Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement
of one-half the people of this country, their
social and religious degradation--in view of
the unjust laws above mentioned, and because
women do feel themselves aggrieved,
oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their
most sacred rights, we insist that they have
immediate admission to all the rights and
privileges which belong to them as citizens of
the United States.”
Women deprived of self-dependence (1522)
3
4. Look at this cartoon from a contemporary magazine and interpret this image of opposition
to women’s suffrage. According to the cartoonist, how would women’s full citizenship
complete with the right to vote affect the life of men and women?
Cartoon from 1910
4
4. Elaborate on the implications of the following lines from Fuller in the context of her
arguments in “The Great Lawsuit”:
a) 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.
b) Union is only possible to those who are units (Norton 1529).
5