Not That Margaret Fuller

That is to say, not the woman who lives in the Belvedere section of Lowell, but a woman born in Massachusetts in 1810.  The New York Times Book Review from last week, 22 January 2012, has a review of a new biography, The Luives of Margaret Full: A Biography.  The author of the book is Mr John Matteson and of the book review is Ms Mary Beth Norton.

The subject of the biography, Ms Fuller, seems to have led an extraordinary life.

My problem is with the lede:

Margaret Fuller, a woman of great talent and promise, had the misfortune to be born in Massachusetts in 1810, at a time and place in which the characteristics of what historians have termed “true womanhood” were becoming ever more rigidly defined.  Well brought-up women like herself were to be cultured, pious, submissive and genteel.  Fuller, by contrast, was assertive and freethinking.  She was also—and to some extent, still is—a difficult person to like.

My problem is the idea that it was a misfortune to have been born in 1810.  Per the review she seemed to have been sufficiently free to have edited a Transcendental quarterly, to have met Mr Horace Greeley and to have been "the first full-time female employee of his New-York Tribune" and to have written a book.  Her relationships, as reported, were wide and varied.  She seems to me to have flourished.

OK, I will grant you that she didn't benefit from indoor privies or air conditioning.  Aside from that, one era is like the rest, an opportunity do your very best.  She took advantage of her talents and prospered.  She certainly was not submissive.  She seems to have been cultured and, in her own way, pious.  Genteel I can not judge.

Regards  —  Cliff