The Conditions for Liberation (Homework assignment)

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance is a call to look inward for the genius that inhabits the breast of every man capable of thought. Margaret Fuller’s essay, “Woman in the Nineteenth Century” is an analogous call to women to search inward for sources of strength and inspiration. Both authors speak on the tendency of people to rely on others as a ground for their sense of self. Emerson specifically contends that the opinion of the majority as it expresses itself in society should not in any way impinge itself upon the calm stability of the individual soul: “Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.”

Yet the privilege to be independent and self-determined is overlooked by Emerson as precisely that – a privilege of men. Fuller understands that this deeply rooted double standard has had immense consequences for woman and the very possibility of feminine self-reliance. If women are not allowed to think of themselves as anything but creatures “made for man”, they will not be capable, either socially or psychologically, of embracing the same independence that Emerson advocates to his readers. Fuller believes that both women and men have the innate capacity to flourish into self-creative beings, but she knows that the structural conditions of society itself must be equalized before this natural equality can be displayed in its fruition: “We would have a path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man. Were this done and a slight temporary fermentation allowed to subside, we should see crystallizations more pure and of more various beauty. We believe the divine energy would pervade nature to a degree unknown in the history of former ages, and that no discordant collision, but a ravishing harmony of the spheres would ensue. Yet, then and only then, will mankind be ripe for this, when inward and outward freedom for Woman as much as for Man shall be acknowledged as a right, not yielded as a concession.”

While fuller and Emerson fundamentally share the same thesis, Fuller acknowledges a historical/sociological dimension in this issue of liberation that must pragmatically be dealt with before the call of the Transcendentalist ideal can be successfully heard and heeded.