Margaret Fuller Monologue

In an Emerson class I took recently at our Center, each student took the part of a Transcendentalist for a fun and entertaining round table discussion. I took the part of Margaret Fuller and used this monologue as a base for my role.

Good evening. I'm Margaret Fuller, born in 1810. My full name is really Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli. If you're wondering about the name Ossoli, there is some controversy over whether I was really married to Giovanni Ossoli. I assure you we were, secretly, in Italy after I had been sent to Europe by Horace Greely as the first female correspondent of THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE in 1846. By 1847 I had based myself in Rome.

Do you know that I was considered the best-read person in New England, male or female, and was the first woman allowed to use the library at Harvard College? Hmmp! Not a student, mind you. Women simply didn't have equal rights with men, although our minds were no doubt equally sharp, if not sharper. It fell upon me to defend, through the nobility of my knowledge and language, the rights of women as independent and rational beings.

But I digress. In Italy, I allied myself with the patriot Giuseppe Mazzini...he was leading a revolution for Italian unification, and Mazzini impressed me with his holiness and mission. Those were heady times.

Although I had never had much success with men up until this time, and I was in my late thirties, I met the most marvelous and romantic Marquese Giovanni Angelo Ossoli, who was in his late twenties. We fell in love, and had a beautiful son, Angelo Eugene in 1848.

Unfortunately, the Roman Republic was defeated, and in 1850, we decided to take refuge in the United States. Tragically, that is where my story ends, as the captain of the merchant freighter, the USS Elizabeth, expired from smallpox and the junior officer who took over didn't have the experience to handle the hurricane we encountered just off the U.S. coast on July 19.

Shipwrecked. My family perished. Our bodies never found. My manuscript describing the dramatic social and political developments in Rome lost. And I was only 40 years old.

I was amused to learn that when the news of my death reached Boston, one of Boston's eminent men remarked: "it is just as well so."

He was no doubt thinking of the agitation I might cause by my brilliant conversations and lightning pen about the high spirit of liberty and Italian heroism. The times were growing dark in America. The Slave Power was drawing its lines closer about the citadel of freedom.

The movement I had encouraged--including prison reform, the emancipation of slaves, and women's rights...was fading. The period of poetic aspiration and joy that I had labored in -- ended. Had I survived, as its priestess I would have found a deserted shrine.

So what can I say about my life, looking back?

I was well educated by my father and private schools and worked as a teacher, writer and editor. I became well acquainted with the Transcendentalists and was known for my brilliant conversations. I understand Emerson himself was first put off by what he considered by plainness (!) and disconcerting nearsightedness, but he acknowledged that I was intellectually a most rewarding personality showing nobility of mind and a capacity for being extremely entertaining.

I can assure you that Giovanni did NOT find me plain.

I was a journalist, critic, women's rights activist and first editor of the Transcendental publication, THE DIAL. I was the first full-time female book reviewer in journalism. My book, WOMAN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, is considered the first major feminist work in the United States. I inspired such advocates for women's rights as Susan B. Anthony.

But enough about me. You live in an exciting time. Much of my goal to emancipate women from their traditional intellectual subservience to men and to enjoy access to higher education has been accomplished.

In closing, let me tell you this little known fact: I am the great-aunt of R. Buckminster Fuller, whose eccentric and humanistic idealism is so evocative of American Transcendentalism.

Thank you.