Speaking of individualism, Emersonian Transcendentalism, and
women’s rights (see previous post), Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) should surely be noted.
When Emerson wrote “Self-Reliance” one senses he was writing
for men. Self-reliance is “manly” and
dependence is “effeminate.” Margaret
Fuller, however, taking her inspiration from the Transcendental roots of Emerson’s
essay, called on women to develop their independence and on men to treat women
as equals.
However gendered the traditional concept of God, the
Transcendental “Oversoul,” suggesting as it does the Hindu concept of Brahma,
was more abstract and universal.
Emerson’s theory of two selves, the social self and the “aboriginal self,”
made it possible to separate gender, a social category, from the Transcendental
selfhood or “soul.”
Thus Margaret Fuller undergirds her call for women’s social
and legal equality with an appeal for Woman’s need “as a nature to grow, as an
intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded, to unfold such
powers as were given her when we left our common home,” that “home” being our
source in the Universal “One.”
At times, Fuller sounds like an essentialist, capitalizing
“Woman” (and “Man”) , referring to “Femality,” and presenting “male and female”
as a “radical dualism.” Yet, she argues that the “feminine element…is no more
the order of nature that it should be incarnated pure in any form” and asserts
that “There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.” Even the
ancients are invoked as recognizing the fluidity of gender identity: “Man partakes of the feminine in the Apollo,
Woman of the masculine as Minerva.”
As transcendental souls, women are the equal of men and as
capable of self-reliance (which Fuller also refers to as “self-dependence,”
“self-respect,” and “self-help”) as any man.
As for relationships, she says, “Union is only possible to those who are
units,” and she strikes a modern note when she calls for the wife to be an
“equal partner” with her husband.
Fuller’s faith in transcendental individualism, however, while it gave her the confidence to pursue her own independence, did not prevent her from speaking out for social justice, not only for women, but also for slaves, Native Americans, the poor, the sick, convicts, and immigrants. Her own freedom was not to be enjoyed at the expense of her fellow Americans. As the first American “foreign correspondent” she openly supported the revolutionary movements in Europe in the 1840’s. Her life and writings, unlike those of Emerson and Ayn Rand (see previous post), offer strong testimony to the compatibility of individualism and communitarianism.
