Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In Bright Circle, Randall Fuller takes on the by now familiar, yet still welcome, work of centering women in literary and philosophical traditions from which they have been excluded. He chooses five women active within the friendship and family networks that constituted American Transcendentalism: Mary Moody Emerson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, Lidian Jackson Emerson, and Margaret Fuller. His claims will be familiar to many within the study of American Transcendentalism, new to some. He emphasizes the centrality of women's intellectual, artistic, and domestic work to Transcendentalism, focusing on Margaret Fuller's Conversations, Elizabeth Peabody's bookshop, and writings by all five women. He argues that these women, while providing writers like Emerson and Thoreau with their foundational ideas, were the most averse to what he calls Transcendentalism's “wispy idealism” (329). Part of Fuller's project is to recenter Transcendentalism in Boston, and while many of us have long seen Transcendentalism as multi-centered in location as it was multi-dimensional in thought and expression, for others, Concord may still function as its singular center. Fuller's work offers a correction to that misprision. Also welcome is the still needed refocusing on women. Nearly 30 years ago, Phyllis Cole published her groundbreaking study of Mary Moody Emerson, considering that Emerson one of the hallmark American thinkers of the late 18th century, and as the title of her book tells us, one of the major players in the “origins of Transcendentalism.”The past 30 years have seen excellent attention to these originating and participating thinkers of and within Transcendentalism. In addition to Cole's Mary Moody Emerson and the Origins of Transcendentalism (1998), we have seen Joan Goodwin's The Remarkable Mrs. Ripley: The Life of Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley (1998); Megan Marshall's Pulitzer-nominated Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism (2005) as well as her Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Margaret Fuller: A New American Life (2013); Helen Deese's Daughter of Boston: The Extraordinary Diary of a Nineteenth-Century Woman, Caroline Healey Dall (2006), as well as her extensive work editing Dall's journals. The field has been rich in single-authored volumes as well as in multi-authored essay collections.In their incisive summation of the work done then to date (2014), Cole and Jana Argersinger describe the foundational work that began with the textual recovery projects of the 1970s and 1980s, many of which continue to this day. “For over thirty years,” they wrote, “a veritable scholarly industry has been widening the base for understanding transcendentalism, even as the women's studies movement has overturned the canon with its body of recovery work” (7). Their essay opens Toward a Female Genealogy of Transcendentalism, a volume that includes primary source material interwoven with essays focusing on 17 different women within the Transcendentalist world. It includes substantive discussions of women at Brook Farm and the African American women of the Women's Era Club. The book includes essays on four out of the five women Fuller chooses as his subjects, but surprisingly he seems to have missed out on most of the book, briefly mentioning it only in relation to Mary Moody Emerson.Fuller's book raises concerns far more complicated than a book review can encompass. What follows is only a beginning. In the spirit of Transcendentalism, it centers questions and provocations to thought. When Christopher Pearse Cranch or Lidian Jackson Emerson articulated their satirical takes on their friends’—and indeed loved ones’—work, they participated in the provocation long esteemed by communities of activist thinkers. When Caroline Sturgis described herself as an endless questioner, she spoke for many within the Transcendentalist friendship groups. To borrow a phrase from their intellectual predecessors that remains apt in ours, theirs were lives devoted to “free and frank inquiry.”Turning to questions that are especially pertinent within Transcendentalism but relevant to all fields of literary study: As scholars, how do we grapple with what our fields have neglected or outright dismissed? Especially now, nearly a half century into concerted and excellent recovery work, how do we increase accessibility to lesser-known writings, and how also do we address the failings in such works and in their authors? A crucial dimension of that question involves turning the mirror on ourselves, directly engaging with the work that has made ours possible and examining the problems that persist within our own interpretive frameworks. Most importantly, how do we continually ask ourselves who is missing from our studies? To put the matter bluntly, as did Eric Gardner in his essay for Cole and Argersinger, while American Transcendentalism may have seemed the “‘whitest’ of spaces,” that may reveal our own failure to see who actually was there.I wish I could say that Fuller's book provides us exemplary answers to these questions. But unfortunately, I often found myself confronting the many and varied pitfalls we face in our scholarship. Ironically, for a book that centers the collective nature of women's writings and their activist work, his own approach remains distinctly individualistic. One of his central tenets is that individualism fatally flawed Transcendentalism. He emphasizes how the (male) Transcendentalists’ focus on the abstract “Individual” obscured contributions made by real individuals. Bringing forward these five women's contributions, he spotlights each woman in turn, and yet his approach oddly obscures the work upon which his depends. In his chapter narratives, he rarely discusses previous scholars’ work, giving only broad and unspecified acknowledgment in the introduction (7). There are short bibliographic essays for each figure at the end of the book; some significant books and articles are absent from this section, including Leslie Perrin Wilson's “‘No Worthless Books’: Elizabeth Peabody's Foreign Library, 1840–1852.” Copious endnotes source quotations, often by page number or “as quoted in.”Yet neither in the endmatter nor in the body of his work does he attempt to situate his own interpretations within the much larger conversation of the past 50 years. For example, it is alarming in the chapter on Sophia Peabody to find no reference to Marshall's significant discussion of how Peabody's Cuba Journal anticipated Emerson's and Thoreau's writings about the natural world (Marshall 278; Fuller 129), nor mention of Patricia Dunleavy Valenti's discussion of Peabody's early statements of Transcendentalism in the same journal.1 Similarly, with Fuller's commentary on how Mary Moody Emerson articulated ideas that later appeared in Waldo Emerson's writing, there is no direct engagement with Cole's close and detailed discussions of the topic. Another surprising omission occurs in his chapter on Lidian Jackson Emerson. Fuller's discussion of the gathering in Concord shortly after the Phi Beta Kappa address seems beholden to Cole's excellent essay, “Men and Women Conversing: The Emersons in 1837” (in Emersonian Circles: Essays in Honor of Joel Myerson, Wesley T. Mott and Robert E. Burkholder, eds., 1997).It is disconcerting to see the groundbreaking interpretations made by others—interpretations that have been integral to redefining the field—presented without attribution. Have such interpretations succeeded so well that they have become “common knowledge,” repeated freely by all, no longer needing to credit the thinkers who originated them? This remains a troubling question, calling us to consider just what our responsibility as scholars is. How do we situate our ideas in relation to others’ work, continuing the conversation and inviting others to join? Especially given the fraught nature of most recovery and reinterpretation projects, direct and transparent engagement with earlier work always seems called for, especially in a book in which one of the central claims is how women thinkers received little to no credit for originating and first articulating key elements within Transcendentalism. While I understand Fuller's choice may have been driven by his desire to write a seamless biographical narrative for each figure, seams need not always be invisible.Recovery work entails interpretation or, as the case usually is, significant reinterpretation that upends previously held assumptions. Dismissal or neglect often turns on an era's own biases: what prejudices prevented scholars from recognizing the merits of a work? What have readers failed to see because their own interpretive strategies stood in the way? As Margaret Fuller aptly reminded herself and her readers, a work needs to be read on its own terms. Her comment is particularly generative when it comes to the experiments in genre undertaken by the Transcendentalists, whether in the variations within their poetry, philosophic dialogues, dream-like prose vignettes or the varieties of journal-keeping they undertook. Even Bronson Alcott's much maligned “Orphic Sayings” might yet open to a reader who generates an interpretive strategy appropriate to its form.While Fuller's project is primarily biographical, he does bring attention to varieties of literary innovation, most signally with Mary Moody Emerson's Almanacks. At the same time, in the spirit of encouraging further interest and acknowledging previous and ongoing projects, one wishes he had substantively mentioned the brilliant work done by Noelle Baker and Sandra Petrulionis in building ways to read Mary Moody Emerson's work as well as in making that work readily available to others.2 Their extensive and ongoing digital edition, designed to “think through issues of display, reading practice, [and] the representation of documentary materiality,” together with Baker's articles, have truly made it possible to read work that might remain impenetrable. Both to encourage further study and to acknowledge the work already accomplished, one could wish for more direct and detailed comment somewhere in the chapters themselves—whether in the chapter focused on Mary Moody Emerson or in the epilogue noting the fate of her manuscripts. It is unfortunate that Fuller relies on the earlier Tolman transcripts now considered a problematic source, given their inaccuracies.Not only may we need to develop new methods for reading unfamiliar genres, but also and always, as scholars, we need to question rigorously our own interpretive frameworks, to see how they are holding up. As Argersinger and Cole point out, older models of scholarship depended upon sharp contrasts that suited a methodology based in oppositional thinking. Either/or was the governing paradigm. Contrast was paramount, often to the point of mutual exclusivity. Cole and Argersinger observe, “At times these currents of scholarship apparently stood in opposition, discovering antagonistic 19th-century cultures. We hope to move beyond such a standoff” (7). That hope has not yet been realized. Fuller draws upon heightened contrasts to structure interpretations based in highly dramatic prose. This is most notable in his comments on Transcendentalist idealism and prominent in his frequent use of tropes associated with “romantic” love narratives. Such either/or framing steadily fuels dramatization but readily obscures complexity. The Transcendentalists’ discussions—whether the topic was love, marriage, genius, the self and its vexed nature, principled engagement in societal reform—were nothing if not multidimensional, overlapping, and deeply intertwined. While they can be framed within an either/or paradigm, such bifurcation occludes the richness of difference among their varying perspectives.Interpretive frameworks come with their own vocabularies. Unfortunately, within Transcendentalist studies, oppositional thinking traded heavily in gendered stereotypes. Present throughout the book are painful phrasings that replicate the very biases he seeks to overturn. Women are “garrulous,” “incessant” talkers (154, 348). With such phrases, a woman's ready and powerful verbal fluency is diminished into an irritating habit. Mary Moody Emerson's interest in and indeed deep concern about theological matters is described as “her endless barrage of theological questions” for a “tolerant minister” (37). For Margaret Fuller, “talk was her salvation,” as if her brilliant ability to speak extemporaneously could only be explained by neediness (246). Elizabeth Peabody comes across as a money-making schemer, or as someone who was admired “despite her meddlesomeness and abstraction and incessant torrent of talk” (348). Even as he emphasizes the fact that Peabody had to make money to support the many members of her family, he undercuts that emphasis with damaging, toss-away phrases.The cumulative effect of such language is distracting, not to mention dispiriting. Women are “smitten”; they fall “hopelessly” or “headlong” in love (75, 273, 298). Intellectual activity is described as something “aswirl inside” a woman (in this case, describing Elizabeth Peabody, 94). Lydia Jackson is attracted to Emerson, not so much for his thought-provoking ideas as for the sound of his voice. Might it not be both? In the Conversations, certain participants seem to lack agency over their own expression. In his dramatic recreations, for example, ideas “gush forth”; Sophia Ripley “suddenly burst[s] out with a new idea”; Margaret Fuller is “suddenly struck with a new thought” (269, 271, 281). Even as he seeks to emphasize his subjects’ intellectual power, he casually takes it away: Elizabeth Peabody has a “knack for knowing the latest trends in thought and culture” (emphasis added), rather than amplifying her incisive attention and expansive reading, not to mention facility with several languages (177). Margaret Fuller “lashes out” at Emerson when she is not charming him (277, 193).In each case, the verbs seem oddly matched to the evidence. For example, in the descriptions of Fuller (“lashed out,” “charmed”) such conclusions are not foregone given what was written at the time. Emerson notes in his journal: “S.M.F. writes me that she waits for the Lectures seeing well after much intercourse that the best of me is there. She says very truly.”3 Were her words an emotional outburst as R. Fuller renders them through his phrase “lashed out”? Was this less reactive, one of Fuller's characteristically frank assessments of her friends’ strengths and weaknesses? No record remains from Fuller herself to provide her words or her reflections on the intent behind them. In the matter of “charming” the Emersons, R. Fuller's description turns on Lidian's report to Elizabeth Peabody after Fuller's initial visit to Concord. She writes, “you will be glad to hear that we find real satisfaction—Miss F. Mr E. & myself—in our intercourse with each other.” She expresses surprise that everything went so well, given the fact that each person held strong convictions that could readily put them at odds: “We like her—she likes us—I speak in this way—because you know we came together almost strangers—all to one another and the result of the experiment . . .—was doubtful—the tendencies of all three being strong & decided—and possibly not such as could harmonize.”4 I find myself hard pressed to equate “satisfaction” and unexpected consonance with “charm.”For those who would argue that such matters of diction are insignificant in a book this size, consider the cumulative effect and influence. In his New Yorker essay prompted by the recently published Library of America edition of Margaret Fuller's writings, James Marcus notes that Margaret Fuller seems to be enjoying something of a moment. He mentions Allison Pataki's novel based on Fuller's life as well as Bright Circle. In his description, Marcus characterizes Margaret Fuller as an “incurable gossip,” an idea that arises less from Pataki's novel than from R. Fuller's discussion, in which we are told that the Conversations brought women together for “laughter and gossip,” and that Margaret Fuller “gossiped” to Elizabeth Hoar in a letter about meeting George Sand (193, 302). Indeed, R. Fuller's Margaret Fuller seems well-suited to play the heroine in a work of popular fiction: mercurial, vulnerable, lovesick, demanding, “eager for conquests,” a queen in need of her court (248, 258).At a time when presses may need to cut the on us to do our own editing as well as our own one wishes that Fuller had varieties of and is but a and are and in his narrative they are in the the of Fuller's is given as Sarah in the of but the into the When he the for the first of The there is an unfortunate of and in the he he as he an about Bronson Alcott's Conversations with on the being as that has been as the it these are unfortunate and might be more problematic are that the the first Margaret Fuller to Sophia her ideas about what the Conversations might long to in the letter is rich in and well In she writes, a be in to the questions. What were we to How we do R. Fuller these to Ripley and turns them into the questions with which Fuller the first We have no for We do not know what her many of us, such We put words in the of those we even if those words would seem to the We the in which they were written and our readers how much we from the even with writers who their Also is his to one of Margaret Fuller's direct to Emerson a and a half after she made a difference that might seem one that the his and does not the same if end with one of the that has literary As Argersinger and Cole has at to to Eric Gardner calls the of that in Transcendentalist studies This is another in Fuller's much work has recently focused on Transcendentalist or women and particularly on women of essay about is a case in In Concord there were and her was a of the Concord Female from her as well as from those women within the Concord and communities who and in work, she was also a deeply to At she had the for years she to the recently of need to and indeed our own are not and have we to out thinkers and work is now readily to Fuller's might be that no women of Margaret Fuller's Conversations, and there is an to that In the and life work would the ways in which Margaret Fuller's work for women was or was to all so I end with the we all No book can do how can each of our do
Source: The New England Quarterly
DOI: 10.1162/tneq.r.1012
Author: Sarah Wider
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Gender equality
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4417061010
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