Woman in the Nineteenth Century

In 1845, when women could not vote, own property in their own names, or attend most universities, Margaret Fuller wrote the book that would become the foundation of American feminism. As the most celebrated intellectual in New England, the first female editor of The Dial, and the woman who forced Harvard to open its library to her, Fuller brought unmatched authority to her argument: that the subordination of women was not natural law but a social construction that denied half of humanity its full development. She examines what society loses when women are kept in a state of dependency, drawing on transcendentalist philosophy to argue that the individual soul knows no gender. The book moves through marriage, labor, education, and the spiritual vocation of women with a sweep and passion that feels startling even now. It is a work written in full consciousness of its historical moment, yet it speaks across centuries to anyone who has ever been told they are less than they might become.