Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
Goethe’s book bodes an era of freedom like its own, of “extraordinary
generous seeking,” and new revelations. New individualities shall be developed
in the actual world, which shall advance upon it as gently as the gures come out
upon his canvass.
A profound thinker has said “no married woman can represent the female
world, for she belongs to her husband. The idea of woman must be represented by
a virgin.”
But that is the very fault of marriage, and of the present relation between the
sexes, that the woman does belong to the man, instead of forming a whole with
him. Were it otherwise there would be no such limitation to the thought.
Woman, self-centred, would never be absorbed by any relation; it would be
only an experience to her as to man. It is a vulgar error that love, a love to woman is
her whole existence; she also is born for Truth and Love in their universal energy.
Would she but assume her inheritance, Mary would not be the only Virgin Mother.
Not Manzoni alone would celebrate in his wife the virgin mind with the maternal
wisdom and conjugal aections. The soul is ever young, ever virgin.
And will not she soon appear? The woman who shall vindicate their
birthright for all women; who shall teach them what to claim, and how to use
what they obtain? Shall not her name be for her era Victoria, for her country
and her life Virginia? Yet predictions are rash; she herself must teach us to give
her the fitting name.
4.17.2 Reading and Review Questions
1. What does Fuller mean when she speaks of the universe-spirit and the
desired relationship of humans to this universe-spirit? How do you
know? How does this spirit relate to Emerson’s idea of “one universal
order?”
2. What role does this artist play in relation to the universe-spirit? Why?
How do you know? What is the eect of this relationship on the place of
women in society?
3. To what degree and eect, does Fuller use Christian ideals, images, and
language? What of classical (Greek and Roman) ideals, images, and
language? How, if at all, does she reconcile the two?
4. What position do women hold in the harmonious universe that Fuller
describes? Why? How? What role do they hold in the universe as it is, i.e.
in disharmony with the universe-spirit? Why? How?
5. How do Fuller’s transcendental tenets correct, or improve upon, failures
(even atrocities) of such American institutions as Puritanism, Slavery,
Domesticity, and/or Government?
Page | 1081