Transcendentalist Women in Conversation: Margaret Fuller, Sophia Ripley, and “Woman”

This essay focuses on Sophia Ripley’s 1841 article “Woman,” which was published in the Dial two years before Margaret Fuller’s “The Great Lawsuit. Man Versus Men. Woman Women” appeared same publication. Originally written as homework for one of Boston Conversations (1839–1844), plea favor women’s right to education perfectly epitomizes polyphonic nature feminist social advances antebellum America. Inspired by reinterpretation William Ellery Channing’s concept “self-culture,” viewing a means improve woman’s condition, text debunks “separate spheres” and urges readers consider women intellectual beings rather than through prism idealized, unrealistic “muse.” Inscribing part stride Transcendental movement, I will illustrate similarities between argument, Fuller’s, that other Transcendentalists, while also confronting it with what Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote subject.