Margaret Fuller: A New American Life Book

This is a wonderful book about one of the most interesting women in American history. I had always wanted to learn more about Margaret Fuller since visiting Concord and seeing the room where the Transcendentalists used to meet and then seeing the plaque in Rome where she lived during the Roman Republic. She lived a full, romantic life. She met everyone and seemed to live as though there was no tomorrow, and, sadly, came to an tragic end after sailing home with her husband and child. I could not get that part of the story out of my mind for days after reading this book. The author is a real master. Her treatment of Fuller's Italian husband seemed very plausible, sympathetic, but also unsparing when it came to characterizing him. Count Ossoli was probably not Margaret Fuller's wisest choice in life, but Megan Marshall neither scolds nor defends her for this. She just tells a wonderful story about a woman following her passion for life and ideas.

Marshall's biography presents the facts of Margaret Fuller's personal life. However, the focus on the personal overwhelmes the thin coverage of Fuller's contributions to American thought and literature. Very little context was provided for quotations from Fuller which used Transcendentalist vocabulary and/or the idealist vocabulary of her readings in English and German philosophy, as well as Swedenborgian ideas in the air at her time. Without such context, many of Fuller's statements sound positively dotty. There is not enough presentation and analysis of the ideas that Fuller introduced into the culture of her times and into American thought. In fact, analysis is pretty much missing from the book, as if a biographer's task were to present only facts, without analysis or context. That's not so. Marshall is so careful to not shape the story of Fuller's life that she produces pages without narrative momentum or logical argument. Thus, the book is dull reading in spite of a fascinating subject. I can't understand how the book garnered good reviews and a Pulitzer prize.

Today Margaret Fuller is more often recognized for her unconventional lifestyle that amounted to only the last four years of her life when she moved to Italy or her tragic passing. This is all the more unfortunate because during her extremely productive life she distinguished herself as a writer, editor, jounalist,Transcendentalist, feminist, nurse, intellectual,champion of the downtrodden of society and advocate for the American Indian. She redefined the role of women in a male dominated society in which women were either wives and mothers, spinsters, or prostitutes.
Born into what 19th century America would have described as genteel poverty, she was raised by her father to excel. She counted among her close personal friends Nathaniel Hawthorne, Horace Greeley, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. With Emerson she would share a bond which was intimate but at times also contentious.
Often described as unattractive, Fuller was also born with a spinal disorder which made one shoulder higher than the other. Because of her physical appearance she often was seen as someone who men wanted to be friends with but whom men did not view romantically. When she went to Italy in an attempt to join in the efforts to reunify the country, she broke with traditionalism, took a lover, and nine months later had a son. Speculation varies as to whether the couple ever legally married, but one fact is known. On Fuller's return to America with her little family, their ship sank within sight of the Long Island shore. Only her child's body was recovered.
Fuller's biographer Megan Marshall has accessed a wealth of information regarding Fuller through Fuller's own writings and correspondence and those of her friends and contemporaries and has produced a chronological record of Fuller's life that is about as thorough and comprehensive as I have ever read. It takes an in depth view of a woman who had no limits and lived life on her own terms with honesty and integrity.
This bio appealed to me because it defined Fuller and expanded on her legacy in great detail which made her seem almost larger than life. She never lived to see 50, but compressed many lives into her own brief one. The Margaret Fuller introduced in this book is quick witted and could more than hold her own against any man.

In my opinion, I don't care for the author's style of so many quotation marks around sentence fragments and phrases, and with no notes as to the source. It is difficult to absorb sentence after sentence written in this manner, but then, I am no academic, just a tired mom who reads to learn a bit while getting into a story. I gave it more than a star or two because I love learning about what happened long ago in Groton, Concord and Cambridge. Most outstanding part to me: The scene that I will call Margaret's experience as a "death doula" for the unmarried young woman was well written and jarring.

This book deserves being written because Fuller's history/career is important for early
American literature. Whether it deserves to be plowed through is another issue. There are tantilizing snatches of why this woman might have been an interesting force in the Emerson and cohort era but her continued insistence to "tell all, share all" borders on pathological. There is lots in her story to pity her - a highly intelligent woman's dreadful lot - being denied the extended education she deserved, carrying for a large batch of siblings she did not breed and the stifling of her chances to be a scholar - but pity and gushing Victoriana gets dreadfully boring. If you think the era of Waldo Emerson is interesting you might find yourself more intrigued than I managed to be. It could have been better if attacked by a good editor with a red pen.