Woman in the Nineteenth Century

To begin with, let’s define transcendentalism. As many other concept within the humanistic sciences, this one has not a universally accepted definition.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, it is an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century, centered on Ralph Waldo Emerson.

According to the U.S History, it is people who have knowledge about themselves and the world around them that "transcends" or goes beyond what they can see, hear, taste, touch or feel.

According to what I know so far, it is a concept closely related with context. First of all, it is a movement which emerged -as many others before- as a protest against the society of that time, specifically against the Enlightenment intellectual movement and the Unitarism religious movement and whose main flagship is the idea of people and nature’s virtue.

After an independence process –from Europe-, the United States or “America” was forming itself as a country, looking for its own features. As a result, new concepts, new interests and new visions of the world came out.

Within the new visions of the world, there is the transcendentalism movement which proposed a sense of togetherness in which we and the world are one, in which we are individuals and at the same time part of the world, in which rational thinking was no longer working but feelings.

People who shared this vision of togetherness and the opposition -again- to the intellectuals of Harvard and Cambridge formed an association called the transcendental club in 1836. Some of its members were, of course, Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Margaret Fuller… wait! a woman?!

To my surprise, while I was reading about transcendentalism I found a feminine name. As I said before, America was forming itself and did not have space -among others- for women, not publicly at least. However, this woman was absolutely significant for the development of the transcendentalist movement and history.

Margaret Fuller was a feminist activist, writer and critic. She also was part of the transcendental club, contributor and editor of the Dial, the transcendental magazine and literary critic of The New York Tribune as well.

By Man I mean both man and woman: these are the two halves of one thought. I lay no especial stress on the welfare of either. I believe that the development of the one cannot be effected without that of the other. My highest wish is that this truth should be distinctly and rationally apprehended, and the conditions of life and freedom recognized as the same for the daughters and the sons of time; twin exponents of a divine thought.

In 1845, Margaret published his feminist book called Woman in the Nineteenth Century making a critic of the chauvinist society by saying that there will be a time in which men and women are equal, in which the combination between both men’s and women’s intellectuality mean a enrichment for society. If we think about it, probably the Margaret’s feminist thinking was triggered by her father’s disappointment of having a daughter instead of a son.
It is also worth to mention that through this book, Margaret mentions the inequality of gender within the marriage and compares the lack of women’s right with the lack of slaves’ freedom in the society.


Sources:

- http://womenshistory.about.com
- http://www.ushistory.org
-  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendentalism/