#Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

[philosophybitmaps]

[haggishlyhagging]

From the moment of her untimely death and the decision to publish her Memoirs the process of misrepresenting Margaret Fuller began. Whereas during her lifetime Margaret Fuller was known as both an intellectual woman and a woman of personal magnetism and charm, after her death in what appears to be a fairly consistent pattern for the construction of images of women who have been visible and who have been accorded some status, her personality, and not her intellectual accomplishment, became the focus of attention on her. But emphasising personal qualities at the expense of intellectual ones is not the only bias apparent in the representation of Margaret Fuller, or for that matter, any other woman of comparable note. A particular personal profile, which may bear little resemblance to the reality of the woman's life but which proves to be productive in patriarchal terms, frequently emerges.

In the case of Margaret Fuller, it was the Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli published in 1852 and edited by such reputable men of intellectual stature as Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Henry Channing and James Freeman Clarke, which began the printed distortion of her personality. As Urbanski says, ‘This work became the literary canon that established Margaret Fuller as an "arrogant old maid", aggressive and ugly, the archetypal feminist whose need for attention was channeled into the feminist movement. In fact’, she adds, ‘this depiction of Fuller established the feminist archetype that remains today’ (1980, p. 4).

Margaret Fuller's life has been the subject of many books and biographies, and the Memoirs, edited so soon after her death by men of distinction who knew her, has usually been accepted as an authoritative source. The emphasis and values inherent in it have been built upon, elaborated and amplified by subsequent scholars without necessarily being questioned. But the pattern which the editors set for the interpretation of Margaret Fuller was one in which her conversational ability was prominent, and one in which her writing - where included - concentrated on her literary rather than her social criticism; little attention is paid to her feminism or to Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Unfortunately, says Urbanski, the editors did not merely publish Margaret Fuller's letters and journals; they used their position as gatekeepers not just to select, but to change, her writing. They constructed an image of Fuller that does not have its origins in her work or her life. A comparison between the accounts in the Memoirs and the original documents reveals not only that much of the material was ‘destroyed and defaced’ by the editors, but that they ‘also rewrote Fuller's work, changing her writing style’ (ibid., p. 5, my emphasis).

And if this isn't enough, let it be noted that they then criticised that writing style!

-Dale Spender, Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them

[philosophybits]

I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression.

Margaret Fuller, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

[magicalquote]

Margaret Fuller: It is astonishing what force, purity and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.

[amy-583]

It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.

Margaret Fuller, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

[callmevictor]

Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow.

Margaret Fuller, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

[philosophybits]

Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow.

Margaret Fuller, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

[philosophybits]

It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.

Margaret Fuller, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli