Blackwell Reference Online

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Most famous for her pathbreaking feminist text Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), Sarah Margaret Fuller devoted much of her short life to challenging the narrow, restrictive notions about women's abilities and proper sphere and advocating greater educational, social, and professional rights and opportunities for women. Fuller was a quintessentially public figure, in an era in which women were expected to be quiet, domestic, and self-effacing. Fuller was encouraged in her early intellectual endeavors by her father, politician and lawyer Timothy Fuller. A sometimes harsh and exacting parent, he nonetheless enabled his young daughter to receive a remarkably thorough home education, encouraging the young Margaret to study subjects traditionally deemed “unfeminine,” such as classical Latin and Greek. Fuller also had a considerable amount of formal education outside of the home, attending several schools for girls and young women, including the prestigious Boston Lyceum for Young Ladies. Frustrated at being barred from attending college because of her gender, Fuller began to channel her considerable intellectual energies towards a consideration of why women were so severely discriminated against. When Fuller was 23 she moved with her family to Groton, Massachusetts, where she became involved in the region's Transcendentalist circles. With its mystical, nature-centered spirituality, ... log in or subscribe to read full text