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Margaret Fuller, Wandering Pilgrim
“How is it that I seem to be this Margaret Fuller,” the pioneering feminist, journalist, and political revolutionary asked herself as a child. “What does it mean?” Filled with new insights into the causes and consequences of Fuller’s lifelong psychic conflict, this biography chronicles the journey of an American Romantic pilgrim as she wanders from New England into the larger world—and then back home under circumstances that Fuller herself likened to those of both the prodigal child of the Bible and Oedipus of Greek mythology.
Meg McGavran Murray discusses Fuller’s Puritan ancestry, her life as the precocious child of a preoccupied, grieving mother and of a tyrannical father who took over her upbringing, her escape from her loveless home into books, and the unorthodox—and influential—male and female role models to which her reading exposed her. Murray also covers Fuller’s authorship of Woman in the Nineteenth Century, her career as a New-York Tribune journalist first in New York and later in Rome, her pregnancy out of wedlock, her witness of the fall of Rome in 1849 during the Roman Revolution, and her return to the land of her birth, where she knew she would be received as an outcast.
Other biographies call Fuller a Romantic. Margaret Fuller, Wandering Pilgrim illustrates how Fuller internalized the lives of the heroes and heroines in the ancient and modern Romantic literature that she had read as a child and adolescent, as well as how she used her Romantic imagination to broaden women’s roles in Woman in the Nineteenth Century, even as she wandered the earth in search of a home.
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Margaret Fuller, Wandering Pilgrim
“How is it that I seem to be this Margaret Fuller,” the pioneering feminist, journalist, and political revolutionary asked herself as a child. “What does it mean?” Filled with new insights into the causes and consequences of Fuller’s lifelong psychic conflict, this biography chronicles the journey of an American Romantic pilgrim as she wanders from New England into the larger world—and then back home under circumstances that Fuller herself likened to those of both the prodigal child of the Bible and Oedipus of Greek mythology.
Meg McGavran Murray discusses Fuller’s Puritan ancestry, her life as the precocious child of a preoccupied, grieving mother and of a tyrannical father who took over her upbringing, her escape from her loveless home into books, and the unorthodox—and influential—male and female role models to which her reading exposed her. Murray also covers Fuller’s authorship of Woman in the Nineteenth Century, her career as a New-York Tribune journalist first in New York and later in Rome, her pregnancy out of wedlock, her witness of the fall of Rome in 1849 during the Roman Revolution, and her return to the land of her birth, where she knew she would be received as an outcast.
Other biographies call Fuller a Romantic. Margaret Fuller, Wandering Pilgrim illustrates how Fuller internalized the lives of the heroes and heroines in the ancient and modern Romantic literature that she had read as a child and adolescent, as well as how she used her Romantic imagination to broaden women’s roles in Woman in the Nineteenth Century, even as she wandered the earth in search of a home.
“How is it that I seem to be this Margaret Fuller,” the pioneering feminist, journalist, and political revolutionary asked herself as a child. “What does it mean?” Filled with new insights into the causes and consequences of Fuller’s lifelong psychic conflict, this biography chronicles the journey of an American Romantic pilgrim as she wanders from New England into the larger world—and then back home under circumstances that Fuller herself likened to those of both the prodigal child of the Bible and Oedipus of Greek mythology.
Meg McGavran Murray discusses Fuller’s Puritan ancestry, her life as the precocious child of a preoccupied, grieving mother and of a tyrannical father who took over her upbringing, her escape from her loveless home into books, and the unorthodox—and influential—male and female role models to which her reading exposed her. Murray also covers Fuller’s authorship of Woman in the Nineteenth Century, her career as a New-York Tribune journalist first in New York and later in Rome, her pregnancy out of wedlock, her witness of the fall of Rome in 1849 during the Roman Revolution, and her return to the land of her birth, where she knew she would be received as an outcast.
Other biographies call Fuller a Romantic. Margaret Fuller, Wandering Pilgrim illustrates how Fuller internalized the lives of the heroes and heroines in the ancient and modern Romantic literature that she had read as a child and adolescent, as well as how she used her Romantic imagination to broaden women’s roles in Woman in the Nineteenth Century, even as she wandered the earth in search of a home.
MEG McGAVRAN MURRAY, until her retirement, taught English at Mississippi State University and, before that, at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is the editor of the essay collection Face to Face.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments A Note to Readers Chronology Prologue
Part One. "No Natural Childhood" 1. Her Father's House 2. Hungry for Love 3. "Gate of Paradise" 4. The World of Books
Part Two. The Transition Years 5. Boston Schooling 6. Boarding School at Groton 7. Metamorphosis in Her Young Adulthood 8. The Influence of the Harvard Romantics 9. The Search for Self 10. The Farm in Groton
Part Three. Emerson, Epistolary Friend and Guide 11. The Search for a Guide 12. A Fluid Friendship 13. A "Forlorn" Boston Winter 14. Providence, Pain, and Escape into Illusion 15. "Drawn" by Fuller's Siren Song 16. Retreat from Her Siphoning Sea
Part Four. The Seductive Lure of Nature 17. Religious Crisis 18. A Divine Madness 19. The Siren Song of Nature 20. The Seductive Sand 21. Demonic Desires 22. "The Daemon Works His Will" 23. Redeeming Her Friendships from "Eros" 24. Mystic Cleansing 25. Paradise Regained 26. The Law of the Father and Embrace of Mother Nature
Part Five. The "Fine Castle" of Her Writing 27. A Time to Write 28. Millennial Fever 29. Fuller's Apocalypse 30. Contradictory Wishes and Dreams 31. Pilgrims and Prodigals 32. Discordant Energies 33. Mesmerism and Romantic Yearning in Summer on the Lakes 34. Mother Power, Beastly Men, and Woman in the Nineteenth Century 35. "What Is the Lady Driving At?"
Part Six. Professional Woman, Private Passion 36. A Divided Life 37. Fallen Women and Worldly Men 38. The Garden's Desecration 39. Narcissistic Wounds and Imaginary Mystic Entities 40. Romantic Obsession 41. A Soul-Paralyzing Pain 42. A Trust Betrayed 43. The Dark Side of Her Lot 44. "Possessed of" Her Father 45. Yearning to Wash Her Soul of Sin 46. The Ties That Bind
Part Seven. The Rising Tide of Revolution 47. Passionate Players and Incendiary Social Conditions 48. Entering the European Stage 49. Mazzini Enters 50. Mickiewicz Enters 51. On to Lyons and Italy 52. On to Rome 53. Ossoli Enters 54. To Marry, or Not to Marry? 55. Do As the Romans Do 56. Roman Winter 57. More Rain and Revolutionaries' Conflicting Aims 58. Personal and Political Rebellions 59. A Love Higher than Law or Passion
Part Eight. Apocalyptic Dreams and the Fall of Rome 60. Harsh Reality and Apocalyptic Dreams 61. The Lull before the Storm 62. Deceit and Treachery 63. The Fall of Rome 64. Last Illusions 65. A Wayward Pilgrim Journeys toward Home
