American Literature - Margaret Fuller Research Paper

American Literature - Margaret Fuller - Research Paper Example Fuller’s father took a profound interest in the education of his daughter and it was from him that Fuller received her early education, starting to read from the age of three as well as allowing her to have a strong grasp on languages such as Greek and Latin from a very early age. Her father can be considered to have had a profound impact on shaping Fuller’s feminist personality, as he gave her an education that did not differentiate her based on her gender, by giving her lessons in general subjects, rather than just on subjects such as etiquette, which was expected at the time (Von Mehren,, 1994). Fuller was well schooled and went on to attend several schools, learning both German as well as Italian. Fuller had started publishing one-off articles in magazines by 1934, but when her father died in 1935, leaving the family in financial trouble, she was forced to take a break from her writing and instead take focus on the responsibility of educating her younger siblings. T herefore she became a teacher in Bronson Alcott’s Temple School and Green Street School for a period of two years, from 1936 to 1938. In 1939, Fuller received an offer from a literary and philosophical journal called The Dial, which she accepted and where she worked during the two year period of 1840 to 1842. Fuller served not only as the editor but also wrote a great number of articles and reviews on a great many topics on the subjects of art and literature. It was because of her work here that Fuller first began to gain a reputation as an important figure in the transcendental movement (Gura, 2007). During this time period Fuller kept her own writing up, publishing her book ‘Summer in The Lake’ in 1944 and publishing her famous essay, ‘The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men, Woman versus Women’ in 1943, which is widely considered as the first feminist work of America. The essay was originally written to be published in The Dial and focused on women's eq uality and the role women played in American Democracy. In 1844, Fuller moved to New York where she joined the New York Tribune as a literary critic, thereby attaining her position as the first full-time female book-reviewer. 1n 1846, Fuller had become the journalist’s first female editor. Fuller wrote a great many columns for this publication, and her works included discussions on wide-ranging topics such as art and literature, as well as socio-political issues relevant to both women and other oppressed minority groups. In 1846, fuller travelled to Europe as a foreign correspondent for the New York Tribune, again, the first female to do so, where she interviewed a great number of prominent writers and then sent back reports to America. It was also in Europe that Fuller met Giuseppe Mazinni, with whom she was later to have a relationship as well as a child. In May, 1850, Fuller and her family embarked on a ship to sail back to the United States. Unfortunately, the ship crashe d at a short distance from the shore of New York, killing Fuller and her family, with their bodies unfortunately never recovered. Fuller died at the age of forty. Margaret Fuller died young but left behind a legacy so great that perhaps most women’s rights and activist groups can accredit their progress of the greater part of the