Finding Margaret Fuller: A Novel

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Defying Convention

Margaret Fuller lived at a time when female gender roles were rigidly defined. The word most often used to describe her intellectual gifts was “unnatural.” During her adolescence and young adulthood, most people still believed in the literal truth of the biblical creation story: God created Eve to help Adam and to bear his children. She was fashioned from his rib rather than emerging as an entity in her own right. Such ideological indoctrination, implying the natural inferiority of women, played a role in women’s psychological development. While Margaret (like other women, such as George Sand and Elizabeth Barrett Browning) defied convention in pursuing a life of the mind, the novel portrays her as often feeling torn between a desire for domestic happiness and intellectual achievement.

The novel illustrates the tension between Margaret’s literary aspirations and her longing for domestic bliss, as evident in her relationships with the men in the Concord transcendentalist circle. These men treat her as an intellectual equal, and she finds them attractive because they understand and appreciate her. However, these men are attached to spouses who find Margaret threatening. Lidian Emerson is particularly harsh in her criticism of Fuller’s transcendental flights of fancy. Certainly, she’s threatened by her husband’s attraction to their houseguest. Even though Waldo keeps the relationship platonic, Lidian recognizes his infatuation with Fuller and remarks bitterly, “You…well, you are his high priestess. His goddess. His muse. I’m only taking up space” (180).

A similar tension prevails in Margaret’s relationship with Nathaniel Hawthorne. While the novel suggests that their romance never advances to a sexual level, Nathaniel is smitten to such a degree that Waldo exhibits jealousy. When Nathaniel marries Sophia, she treats Margaret as warily as Lidian. Margaret seems torn between the desire to shine as a great intellect and the desire for a conventional relationship. She recognizes the difficulty of finding a mate who isn’t intellectually threatened by her gifts yet keenly feels the lack of such a companion. Even though both Lidian and Sophia are jealous of her, Margaret envies the secure position they hold as the legal spouses of men she admires. The novel suggests that while Fuller defies convention, she pays a heavy price for her liberation. After a talk with Lidian, she reflects, “She is the one who has won the prize, for she is the one who shall live her life with Waldo” (66).

Searching for Home

Margaret spends much of her life in the novel trying to find a place where she belongs and constantly finds herself frustrated in the attempt to settle down. This quest for home begins early in life when her father dies. As the eldest of eight children, she was raised to shoulder the burden of providing for her mother and siblings. Since her uncles control her father’s meager estate, she’s unable to access all the funds that might have kept a roof over her family’s head. Throughout much of the novel, she’s forced to arrange a series of different lodgings for her family as their limited resources keep them on the move. In addition, Margaret’s need to earn a living requires her to relocate multiple times as jobs materialize and then disappear. Bronson Alcott’s experimental school and its failure demonstrate Margaret’s precarious financial situation in a culture that actively discourages women from seeking their fortunes out in the world.

Even more than the financial woes that keep Margaret on the move, she’s on a quest to find a place where she feels that she belongs. However, her choice of career has already marked her as an outsider. Although she enjoys her visits to the Emerson home in Concord, she’s only a houseguest. Much of the time, she feels unwelcome because of Lidian’s hostility. After Waldo asks her to return after his son’s death, her former mentor lashes out at her while he’s grieving. Thus, even Margaret’s favorite refuge is enemy territory. Her quest for home expands further when Horace Greeley invites her to work for his newspaper in New York. The big city offers a pleasant contrast to her time in Concord because no one is scrutinizing and judging her behavior to the degree that she experienced there.

This welcome trend intensifies once she arrives in Europe. In Paris, she finds that unconventional behavior like that of George Sand isn’t castigated but instead celebrated. Margaret feels that she has finally found her true home when she arrives in Rome. The city’s desire for independence echoes her own aspirations, and its art mirrors her passion for expression. Furthermore, her romance and eventual marriage to Giovanni and parenthood seem to satisfy the deeper longings of her heart to put down roots somewhere. Sadly, this home of her heart is wrested from her when invading armies besiege the Papal States, and Margaret is forced to flee with her husband and son. Her life ends tragically just short of reaching the US, but she spends her last days in anticipation of finding the real home that has eluded her all her life.

The Struggle for Independence

Finding Margaret Fuller examines the struggle for independence on personal, cultural, and national levels. Modern readers may not be aware of the dependent status that defined women’s lives at the beginning of the 19th century. Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, just 18 years before Margaret’s birth. She arrived in the world a mere 34 years after the Declaration of Independence first proclaimed to the world that all “men” are created equal. Ideologically, no one was yet prepared for the notion that women could or should function independently of men.

Initially, Margaret struggles with this issue in the novel by asserting her intellectual independence. She’s considered the most well-read person in the US, male or female, while still in her twenties. Being highly educated allows her to pursue an independent line of thought that defies female subordination to the opinions and rules of the fathers and husbands who control them. Aside from comprehending what she reads, Margaret dexterously expresses herself as an author. Her literary gifts enable her to earn a living as a writer and editor, which renders her economically independent and leaves her open to attacks of unwomanly independence. She observes, “No one assumes that it is my right to have a household of my own. The common view would be that I should marry, and then I may live in my husband’s household” (146).

She faces the same struggle for independence on a cultural level. Her achievements don’t go unnoticed and are even the target of public resentment. While the transcendental set embraces her as its darling, critics are quick to label her as “unnatural.” Edgar Allen Poe christens her “Margaret Fooler” and calls her an “insufferable busybody” because of her involvement in social reform. Margaret’s quest for personal freedom also has a counterpart in Italy and its struggle to throw off the oppressive yoke of foreign rule. In Rome, she finds the expression of her own personal struggle on a larger scale, though Italy’s attempt at unification fails and wasn’t realized until long after Margaret’s death. Its failure mirrors her own failed struggle to achieve independence when she says of herself, “The Much that always wants More. I am a woman who is too unapologetic in my desire to write, to think, to work. I am a woman who is unafraid to speak with the men and support my own life. I want too much” (147).