Margaret Fuller
Discussion Questions:
1.) Consider the following claim:
"Many women are considering within themselves, what they need that they have not, and what they can have, if they find they need it. Many men are considering whether women are capable of being and having more than they are and have, and, whether, if so, it will be best to consent to improvement in their condition" (730).
Consider the distinctions Fuller makes between men's and women's positions in these two sentences. WRITE RESPONSES:
What is at stake for men and for women when they approach questions of what women need and have?
How have these issues shifted or remained the same in our own culture?
2.) Consider also:
"Ascertain the true destiny of woman, give her legitimate hopes, and a standard within herself; marriage and all other relations would by degrees be harmonized with these" (731).
WRITE RESPONSES:
What exactly does Fuller believe is woman's "true destiny"?
What does Fuller mean by the phrase "standard within herself"?
3.) What makes the following quote "radical":
A house is no home unless it contain food and fire for the mind as well as for the body" (732).
More Questions:
4.) What parts of Fuller's work links it to -- or "translates" -- transcendentalist ideals and philosophy? (Perhaps use the handout I gave you on Transcendentalism and try to link parts of Fuller's work to those ideas.)
5.) Some past students have said that Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller have been "boring." Can you counter this claim? What makes them worth reading today?
6.) Fuller's elevated use of language, her almost "evangelical" rhetoric, and her incorporation of a highly educated nineteenth-century conversational style can make her work "slow going" for twenty-first century readers. But, what can make her work exciting or interesting for twenty-first century readers?
7.) Can we imagine ourselves as Fuller's contemporaries listening as Woman in the Nineteenth Century is delivered from the podium of this inspiring and influential feminist teacher?