A Transcendentalist Reading Of Margaret Fuller’s Woman In The Nineteenth Century

As the most famous one of Margaret Fuller’s works, Woman in theNineteenth Century is often read as a political work and the authorviewed as a minor transcendentalist, resulting in a severe critique of her“difficulty” of her prose style. Different from the existing outlook onthat work, this research attempts to scrutinize the work from thetranscendental standpoint to reveal the transcendental ethos hidden inWoman in the Nineteenth Century and to offer scholars and readers amore objective and reasonable interpretation to the work. Actually itsignifies a fact that Fuller applied the transcendentalist ethos asindividualism, Oversoul, intuition, self-cultivation and self-reliance towoman in this masterpiece and the purpose of this study is to exploresuch ethos and analyze that woman, being an individual, occupiessignificant status and has great influence on society; since the premise ofbeing is to “know thyself” for woman, she is more intuitive than manand the core of self-growth is self-introspection and self-application; woman is capable of self-cultivation like man to excavate her potentialand value; as the foundation of true love is being independent for bothman and woman, it is necessary for woman to be self-reliant. Therefore,a deeper understanding of transcendentalism is achieved.