SOURCE: McMaster, Helen Neill. “Ghosts.” Margaret Fuller as a Literary Critic. University of Buffalo Studies 7, no. 3 (December 1928): 35-42.

[In the following excerpt, McMaster claims that Fuller's critical work has been neglected by her editors and biographers.]

The early years of the “great Americano-European legend,” the years before the impending cataclysm of civil strife was to disturb the serenity of America, witnessed the birth of a new phase in New England culture. The Puritan settlers in New England had succeeded in establishing and maintaining, for nearly two centuries, a culture uncontaminated by the depraving influence of European thought; but the time inevitably arrived when their descendants, “the candid children of the West,” became aware of the barrenness of their intellectual heritage. This awakening was accompanied by an exodus of American students reared on the views of Calvin and Knox to the great European universities where they neglected theology for literature. The desire for a native literature and art was inspired, but at the same time the conflicting ideal which may be described as the “cosmopolite” delusion was to perplex and confuse the efforts of American artists.¹

Henry James, the younger, whose education had accorded with the ideas of the most rigorous cosmopolite, could in his early residence abroad yet faintly descry the vague, evocative ghosts of these first pilgrims to Europe. In Rome among others, he encountered “the unquestionably haunting Margaret-ghost,” and in its train came the “wonderment of why she may, to any such degree, be felt as haunting.”² Unable to explain his wonder, he contented himself with the fact that “talk may be still, after more than half a century, made about her.” Another quarter of a century has passed, and an explanation of her continued ghostly potency may be ventured. Margaret Fuller was preëminently the spokesman and critic of those “irrecoverable years” when New Englanders first began intellectually to venture beyond the realms which had hitherto been so clearly charted for them.

On that stormy day in 1850 when Margaret Fuller's troubled life reached its tragic culmination, anguished spectators who stood helpless on the beach and watched the barque Elizabeth breaking up on the reefs off Fire Island witnessed a scene of questionable heroism. A man and a woman with a child in her arms clung to the mast of the rapidly disintegrating ship apparently fearing separation more than death. To her friends, Margaret Fuller's life had seemed romantic and exceptional: some felt that her death was a fit conclusion to the life; others viewed her end in a less favorable light. Much talk was made and no little writing appeared about this woman who had dazzled her contemporaries with her conversation, conversation of such quality that she had come to be called the New England Corinne after Mme. de Staël's popular heroine. Memorial tributes invariably expressed regret for the inadequacy of the written record of her thoughts. Although her scattered essays were collected and published in book form in the early Fifties, they attracted little attention in comparison with the Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, the record of the woman as her personality had impressed her more intimate friends.

Miss Fuller's essays, neglected even in her own day, have since been completely ignored; at the same time her personality has continued to excite interest, interest which at times has been expressed in derision, but more often in praise. The neglect of her written work may be ascribed to various causes. It is for the greater part to be attributed to the misguided enthusiasm of her friends. Not content with the modest claim which might have been made for her as a literary critic, they began the creation of the bright myth which has tended to lessen her literary reputation and to blazon forth the magnetic improvisatrice.

Of the five volumes which Miss Fuller published during her lifetime, in but one, Papers on Literature and Art, did she present herself in the guise of a literary critic. It fails to give a fair idea of her ability, as a number of essays which she had wished to include were omitted by her publisher, who, having to cope with a limited number of pages, made his selection in a purely capricious manner.³ The two posthumous volumes edited by Miss Fuller's brother, Arthur B. Fuller, do not tend to enhance her reputation as a literary critic.

That Miss Fuller's literary remains should have been edited by her brother Arthur was extremely unfortunate. The Reverend Arthur B. Fuller had no interest in literature, nor had he had any experience as an editor. His selections seem to have been made without method and without any attempt to gain unity by the arrangement of the material. The omissions are numerous and misleading; ephemeral notes, unduly emphasizing his sister's religious nature, were published, whereas finished essays of a literary character were overlooked. Mr. Higginson suggests a cause for this unwitting injustice: “This work was admirably done especially when we take into consideration the wide difference in temperament, habits and aims between the sister and the brother.”⁴ He indicates Arthur's character by noting that his work as a minister was inspired with the “zeal of a revivalist.”⁵ Miss Fuller's nature touched her brother's on the common ground of emotional intensity, but hers was an emotional intensity fixed upon objects remote from the sphere of revival meetings. That fact in itself is a sufficient cue to indicate that there could have been but a faint understanding between Margaret and Arthur. In the preface to At Home and Abroad, Arthur speaks of his pleasure in publishing the work as affording “additional proof of her sympathy with all the oppressed.”⁶ Again in his preface to the final volume, he mentions the current interest in his sister and hopes that the publication of Life Without and Life Within will lead “to a true appreciation of the spiritual beauty of her soul.”⁷ Such was the editorial emphasis which has helped to obscure the literary artist.

Miss Fuller's failure to impress her contemporaries as a literary force, in part due to inadequate publication and editorial blundering, is also to be explained by her own attitude toward her literary efforts. Her environment, her sex, and her father's early training had forced her to find life in literature. Dissatisfied with this vicarious mode of living and realizing the limitations of her experience, she erroneously came to believe that Literature opposed Life. The passionate feeling of this spiritual child of Rousseau who “would beat with the beating heart of Nature.”⁸ could not find relief in literature alone. At the time when she had begun to weary of her editorship of the Dial and was wavering between the life of a student and a life of action, she wrote in her journal; “There is a medium somewhere. Philip Sidney found it.”⁹ Sir Philip Sidney fascinated her and remained always her ideal—a man who had compassed both Life and Art. It was not until 1842 when Miss Fuller was thirty-two years old that she definitely adopted a literary career. She was to live but eight years longer, and for the last three of those to be caught up by Mazzini in the movement of Young Italy which terminated in Garibaldi's Rebellion. Rome brought Life; Literature and Art were valued only as commentaries upon the glorious adventure of living.

Four complete biographies besides innumerable essays and reminiscences of Miss Fuller have been published. In all that has been written, her personality has been the dominating note. The romantic facts of her life coupled with her literary friendships furnish captivating material of which her biographers have made ample use. The richness of her personality has blinded her admirers to the actual literary worth of her written work.

Two years after Miss Fuller's death, the Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli appeared, and three editions were required within a few months. Talk about this unusual book only subsided when popular interest was captured by Uncle Tom's Cabin.¹⁰ This first biography was the joint work of three of Margaret Fuller's intimate friends; Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Freeman Clarke, and William Henry Channing. Although they were all friends of Miss Fuller, they were in no sense intimate with each other. The tragic unfulfilment of her personality, which each of them had experienced in all its vividness, made a memorial seem a necessity; and as Emerson wrote in his journal a few months after Miss Fuller's death, “a kind of justice requires of us a monument, because crowds of vulgar people taunt her with want of position.”¹¹ A woman who achieves the “sharp identity,”¹² which she did, is bound to make enemies as bitter as her friends are loyal. Her secret alliance with the young Marchese d'Ossoli during her residence in Italy was open to various interpretations. Her enemies with venomous spite had availed themselves of this opportunity for calumniation. Incensed by idle gossip, the joint authors dwelt largely upon the character and good deeds of their friend.

The Memoirs deserve reprinting, although they may be held responsible for the creation of the mythical Miss Fuller, about whom in apocryphal accounts of her career many fantastic and dubious stories were circulated. The three pictures of the single subject are as different as their three authors. Some facts of her life are veiled by her chivalrous friends, and the composite portrait is shrouded in mysticism. Unreliable as biography, the book is, without being so intended, an intimate history of Transcendentalism. No better account of the period has ever been written. The part contributed by Emerson is valuable as a study in self-revelation, scarcely to be matched in his private Journals.

Thirty-three years after the death of her friend, Julia Ward Howe published a biography of Miss Fuller. In this study Margaret Fuller emerges from the mists of Transcendentalism to be portrayed as a woman active in the social reforms of her day. Again the emphasis is not wholly correct. It is true that Miss Fuller was keenly interested in the reforms rife at the time, but she held herself aloof from any direct connection with reformers and reform societies. Her eminent sanity, with which Emerson was so impressed, did not desert her during the year that she was associated with Bronson Alcott in his Temple School venture.¹³ She was never a member of the Brook Farm Community, although she visited the Farm and sympathized with the aims of these American Fourierites. Her practical sense rejected communistic life and the general sharing of manual labor as a means of attaining their ideals.¹⁴ One has only to read her Woman in the Nineteenth Century to see how far removed her views were from those of the Suffragists. Advocating complete sex equality, she was as shocking to them as they were to the average man of the time with their demand for political equality. Harriet Martineau, writing years after her visit to America, castigates Miss Fuller for her failure to join the abolitionist party.¹⁵ Miss Fuller was doubtless prevented from actively following any of her wide humanitarian interests by an obscure instinctive feeling that her field was literature. At times she was troubled by the fact that she could not join in whole-heartedly with the reformers, not clearly perceiving the necessity of a concentration which to others may wear the aspect of selfishness, if one is to develop a particular talent.

Mrs. Howe's version of Miss Fuller's career apparently failed to satisfy many Bostonians, for the next year a new biography appeared in the American Men of Letters Series by Thomas W. Higginson. Mr. Higginson was distantly connected with the Fuller family, and could himself recall the novel scene of a striking young woman, the intimate of the great men of the day, working within the sacred precincts of the Harvard library under the covert gaze of awe-stricken undergraduates. In his preface, Mr. Higginson stated that his study would be chiefly devoted to Miss Fuller's literary life. He was, however, too intimately concerned to keep wholly within the bounds of his self-imposed restriction. Having been given access to all of the Fuller manuscripts and to several collections of private letters upon the condition that certain episodes would not be mentioned, partisanship was inevitable; consequently the greater part of Mr. Higginson's Life of Margaret Fuller is devoted to quixotic tilting with her enemies. In one brief chapter entitled “Literary Traits,” he gives a few instances of her critical acumen and felicity in phrase-making, but he cannot be said to have traced her literary development. Miss Fuller's amazing marriage was still a question of burning interest to New England. The fire, smouldering for nearly thirty-five years, had just burst into flame. Julian Hawthorne was the immediate cause of the conflagration. In his biography of his father, he printed some hitherto deleted pages of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Roman diary, in which Hawthorne indulged his antipathy for Miss Fuller by recording some slanderous remarks of a second-rate artist, a certain Mr. Mozier.¹⁶ This vilification, although patent and absurd, aroused a newspaper controversy lasting for several months.¹⁷ Mr. Higginson took it upon himself to become Miss Fuller's personal champion. Again interest in the writer gave way to interest in the woman.

Facts will out in spite of Bostonian censorship. In 1903 Julia Ward Howe wrote a preface to The Love Letters of Margaret Fuller in which she said that although these letters were not for “profane eyes,” since they revealed an ardor and depth of nature which many denied to Miss Fuller, it was proper that they should at last be published. As Mrs. Howe had made no mention of this affair in her early biography, it seems probable that she knew nothing of it at that time, for unlike Higginson she was not trusted with the private papers in the hands of the Fuller family. The only possible reason for suppressing the episode thus revealed was that the recipient of the letters had been a German Jew, unknown to Miss Fuller's friends and suspected by them of not having acted quite honorably in his relations with Miss Fuller. The letters themselves give no evidence of this and are altogether innocuous; written in the transcendent, sentimental tone of the day, they have an interest only for students of the period.

In 1920 Katharine Anthony, who unlike her predecessors is neither a Bostonian nor a personal friend of Miss Fuller's, published a biography which may be regarded as complete so far as the facts of Margaret Fuller's career are concerned. Miss Anthony's interest is frankly that of a psychologist. She makes no attempt to deal with Miss Fuller's position in literature.

Although each succeeding generation has had something to say about the life of Margaret Fuller, reprints of her essays have not been made. Her work is practically inaccessible to-day; and her reputation remains, justly or unjustly, as it was fixed by her own generation. The last reprints were published in 1874 by Roberts Brothers of Boston. Although they advertised a new collected edition, they merely reprinted the earlier editions. Her writings have never been properly edited nor collected. Some of her most important essays can only be read in the files of the New York Tribune of 1845 and 1846.

In the late Eighties of the nineteenth century, Sara Josepha Hale did not hesitate to write that the memory of Margaret Fuller would live only so long as the “tender remembrance of personal friendship shall hold it dear.”¹⁸ Mrs. Hale's judgment was upheld by Barrett Wendell in 1900: “She hardly survived the period of which she was so conspicuous an ornament.”¹⁹ Such pronouncements are ever open to revision. That Mr. Wendell erred in judgment is evident from the increasing interest that has been shown in Miss Fuller since his time. It would seem that an attempt should be made to evaluate her writings and to discover what importance, if any, she has in American literature.

The tendency of recent years has been towards a reconsideration of American authors. Earlier judgments, too largely the result of “chauvinistic infatuations”²⁰ have been reviewed. The absurdity of some of the claims made by mistaken patriots has had a retroactive result injurious to our culture. The habit of describing Cooper by likening him to Sir Walter Scott, or of vaunting Bryant as the American Wordsworth, has led students to assume that all American authors are inferior Englishmen and consequently to neglect to acquaint themselves with their native literature. Certain authors have been known as “classics.” Their books are placed upon required reading lists for high school students, who read such books uncritically and soon forget them. In 1909 W. C. Brownell, a most acute and sensitive critic, deploring our custom of indiscriminate praise, accompanied as it is with a failure to appreciate real worth, published his American Prose Masters. It was received as an unwarranted attack upon our literary gods. Since that time intelligent criticism has confirmed his attitude, and a renewed interest in American literature has been awakened.

Our so-called American classics have been dusted and shifted about; forgotten authors have been rediscovered; discriminating recognition has been given to real rather than supposed excellence. Some reputations have been diminished; others have grown in this process. The value of such a scrutiny is that suggested by Stuart P. Sherman: “It is only by using our native literature, by keeping it current, by making it saturate the national consciousness—it is only so that we can make our lengthening history serve and enrich and inform us, and give to our culture the momentum of a vital tradition.”²¹

Nothing is of greater importance to a nation's art than its critical tradition. The lack of a standard leaves the artist in the unpleasant situation of being without a measure, an ideal aim, or a point of departure if he inclines to revolt. The critic is essential to the artist in spite of the fact that he generally regards critics as impertinent intruders in the realm of art. The critical literature of any period is the index to its taste. It is also a part of the stream which has contributed to the taste of our own day. Such is the justification of this study of the critical writings of Margaret Fuller, who, although scarcely read today, has been distinguished by three recent literary historians as the best critic produced in America prior to 1850.²²

Notes

1. Henry James, Preface to What Masie Knew, p. xix.

2. Henry James, William Wetmore Story and His Friends, vol. i, p. 127.

3. Letter from Margaret Fuller to Duyckinck printed in the Bulletin of the New York Public Library, December 1901.

4. Harvard Memorial Biographies, vol. i, p. 75.

5. Ibid., p. 74.

6. Margaret Fuller, At Home and Abroad, p. v.

7. Margaret Fuller, Life Without and Life Within, p. 6.

8. Emerson's Journals, vol. vi, p. 234.

9. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, vol. ii, p. 58.

10. Autobiography of J. F. Clarke, p. 180.

11. Emerson's Journals, vol. vi, p. 250.

12. Henry James, William Wetmore Story, vol. i, p. 127.

13. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, vol. i, pp. 171-2.

14. Ibid., vol. ii, p. 46; Fuller Mms. quoted by Higginson in his Life of Margaret Fuller, p. 180.

15. Harriet Martineau, Autobiography, vol. i, p. 381.

16. Julian Hawthorne, Hawthorne and His Wife, vol. i, pp. 259-61.

17. Life and Letters of Christopher P. Cranch, p. 352.

18. S. J. Hale, Woman's Record, p. 666.

19. Barrett Wendell, A Literary History of America, p. 308.

20. S. P. Sherman, Introduction to American Prose Masters, p. xvi.

21. S. P. Sherman, Introduction to American Prose Masters, p. xv.

22. William P. Trent, American Literature, p. 321; H. C. Goddard in Cambridge History of American Literature, vol. i, p. 343; W. L. Parrington, The Romantic Revolution, p. 426.

Bibliography

Published Writings of Margaret Fuller

(The dates are those of first editions)

At Home and Abroad, edited by A. B. Fuller. Crosby, Nichols and Co., Boston, 1856.

Life Without and Life Within, edited by A. B. Fuller. Brown, Taggard and Chase, Boston, 1859.

Biographical Sources

Emerson, R. W., Channing, W. H., Clarke, J. F. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Phillips, Sampson and Co, Boston, 1852.

Goddard, H. C. Transcendentalism, Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. I, Chapter VIII.

Higginson, Thomas W. Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Boston, 1884.

Newspapers and Magazines

Bulletin of the New York Public Library, December 1901. Letter of Margaret Fuller to E. A. Duyckinck.

General Sources

Clarke, James Freeman. Autobiography. Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Cambridge, 1892.

Emerson, R. W. Journals. Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Boston, 1909-12.

Hale, Sara J. Woman's Record. Harper Brothers, New York, 1885.

Harvard Memorial Biographies. Sever and Francis, Cambridge, 1867.

Hawthorne, Julian. Hawthorne and His Wife. J. R. Osgood and Co., Boston, 1884.

James, Henry. What Maisie Knew. MacMillin and Co., Limited, London. Collected Edition.

James, Henry. William Wetmore Story and His Friends. Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Boston, 1904.

Martineau, Harriet. Autobiography. James R. Osgood and Co., Boston, 1877.

Parrington, W. L. The Romantic Revolution. Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York, 1927.

Scott, Leonore C. Life and Letters of Christopher Pearse Cranch. Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Boston, 1917.

Sherman, Stuart P. Introduction to American Prose Masters by W. C. Brownell. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1909.

Trent, William P. American Literature. D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1903.

Wendell, Barrett. A Literary History of America. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1900.