CHAPTER
7
MARGARET
FULLER’S PRAGMATIC FOURIERISM
Throughout
the 1840s, Fuller travelled in Fourierist circles. Her close friends in the movement included
William H. Channing, Marcus and
I see the future dawning; it is in
important aspects Fourier's future. But
I like no Fourierites; they are terribly wearisome here in
In
previous chapters, I argued that Brownson's and Emerson's grapplings with
Fourier had been unduly neglected, and that the extent of Fourier's influence
on the elder James had not been uncovered until Habegger's recent work. But a similar charge cannot be levelled
against contemporary studies of Fuller: Bell Gale Chevigny, Christina Zwarg,
and Reynolds, among others, have all emphasized Fourier's influence. Chevigny, a self-described Marxist-feminist
(xix), is understandably interested in Fourier's influence as a
"pioneering radical feminist"; she further speculates that Fuller, as
a result of her experiences in Europe, "wanted and increasingly needed to
accept" a system of values similar to Fourierism (383). It is well known that Fuller's reading of
Fourier in fall of 1844 had a profound influence on the final form of Woman in the Nineteenth Century
(Urbanski 57). As we shall see
presently, Zwarg's "Footnoting the Sublime" has established an even
earlier date for Fourier's influence on Fuller.
In a separate study of Fuller's writings for
Given
all this scholarly attention, it is ironic that Fuller had much less to say
about Fourier than had Brownson, Emerson, or James. Then again, the evolution of her attitude
towards Fourierist socialism followed a radically different trajectory. Like Emerson—indeed, before
Emerson—she had expressed her disdain for
As
with Emerson, Fuller's first mention of Fourierism was accompanied by her
supercilious dismissal. In an 1840
letter, probably to William H. Channing, Fuller painted a picture of her ideal
community, far more pleasant and natural than the one proposed by "your Mr
Brisbane":
A few friends should wander along a
little stream like this, seeking the homesteads. Some should be farmers, some woodmen, others
bakers, millers &c By land they should carry to one another the
commoditie[s] on the river they should meet solely for society. At sunset many of course would be out in
their boats, but they would love the hour too much ever to disturb one
another. . . . When we
wished to have merely playful chat, or talk on politics or social reform, we
would gather in the mill, and arrange those affairs while grinding the
corn. What a happy place for children to
grow up in! Would it not suit little
—————— to go to school to the cardinal flowers in her boat, beneath the great
oak-tree? I think she would learn more
than in a phalanx of juvenile florists. . . . Can we not people the banks of some such
affectionate little stream? I distrust
ambitious plans, such as Phalansterian organizations! (LMF
2:179-180)
Fuller went on to wish George Ripley and like-minded
social reformers success in their attempts to "throw off a part, at least,
of these terrible weights of the social contract." But these good wishes were embedded in a
quintessentially Emersonian confession: "I do not feel the same interest
in these plans . . . ."[6] Channing himself was still a "confirmed
Socialist" at the time he co-edited the Memoirs; therefore, he would have been inclined to enlist her
memory in his camp to the fullest extent possible. In discussing her visits to Brook Farm,
Channing allowed that Fuller had had a "catholic sympathy" for the
movement and a general faith in the advent of "Harmony." But he conceded that she had found Fourier's
"organization by 'Groups and Series'" too mechanical: "[A]t this
period, Margaret was in spirit and in thought preeminently a
Transcendentalist" (MemoMF
79-80). Just as Emerson had once wryly
advocated "Concord Socialism" for individualists, Fuller mused in her
journals about "an association, if not of efforts, yet of destinies,"
and declared, "It is a constellation, not a phalanx, to which I
belong" (MemoMF 73).
Apparently
it took years for Fuller to develop her appreciation for Fourier; she agreed
with Emerson that Greeley and Brisbane were "dim New Yorkers" (17?
Mar. 1842, LMF
The
Even so, as Hudspeth notes, Fuller was curious enough to
read Fourier for herself. She almost
certainly met Brisbane, who had remained in
The
earliest evidence for Fuller's reading in and reevaluation of Fourier appeared
soon afterwards. The venue for her
appropriation of Fourier's metaphysics of the "aromal" was most
unlikely—the "
Whatever
her train of thought, her linkage of Association with woman's freedom led to
"a productive disagreement with Emerson on the question of agency and
social change." But, given the
relevance and moral urgency of the concerns she raised elsewhere in Summer on the Lakes, a debate over the
merits of Justinus Kerner's Die Seherin
von Prevorst, the biography of a young clairvoyant, does not seem like the
most likely forum for a discussion of Fourier.
But Andrew Jackson Davis would later make the same connection, praising
the young seeress as the most important teacher in German history—greater than
Luther and Calvin—just as Fourier was far and away the greatest teacher
produced by the French (
As we have already seen in Chapter
5, Fuller argued for the willingness to risk belief in clairvoyance through the
allegorical character "Free Hope," who in turns cites a wise man's
advice: "I have lived too long, and seen too much to be incredulous."[9] In fact, "Free Hope" invokes
Fourier to explain clairvoyance's scientific basis, explaining that the mind of
the poetic dreamer "stretches of itself into what the French sage calls
the 'aromal state'" (SL
146). Compare the following passage from
Fourier's disquisition, immediately after his outline of "sensual
relations between the planets" on "the many other pleasures [jouissances]
of the dead, whom we must call ultra-mondain beings, people more alive than
we are," and their occasional relations with mere terrestrials (OC 3:333):
Vision. One finds an ultra-human faculty among some
of the magnetized and somnambulists, who see without the aid of their eyes
. . . . It is
. . . a faculty borrowed from those in the other life, where the
exercise of the five senses is different than it is here; they are still the
same five senses, but with a perfection immensely superior to those of human
faculties. One could prove, while on the
subject of the aromal movement, that the food of the ultra-mondains and
that of the great planetary bodies is at least twenty times more varied and
more refined than that of our gastronomes.
(OC 3:337, my trans.)
And so on—bizarre as Fourier's elaboration is, versions
of its underlying cosmogony were circulating in Napoleonic France, available
through Mesmer, Restif de la Bretonne, or Swedenborg.[10] In any case, the only other passage on
magnetism indexed in Silberling's Dictionnaire
de sociologie phalanstérienne is found in the Nouveau Monde industriel, which Fuller did not read until several
months later. Thus, as Zwarg
conjectures, she almost certainly read OC
3, possibly the very volume of Fourier that Fuller had borrowed from
This
Fourierist arcana interested Fuller enough that she referred to it again,
albeit more obliquely, in the opening paragraphs of Woman in the Nineteenth Century, in her call for man "to be a
student of, and servant to, the universe-spirit; and king of his planet, that
as an angelic minister, he may bring it into conscious harmony with the law of
that spirit."[11] This flighty rhetoric is also Fourierist
doctrine, possibly gleaned from conversations with
Of
course, Fuller also had more down-to-earth reasons for appreciating Fourier, in
particular, his critique of civilization from a feminist perspective. Since Fourier's amorous corporations often
remind one not so much of sexual freedom, but of an adolescent boy's fantasy of
sexual freedom, "feminist" may not be the first word that springs to
one's mind. Faiza Blashak, for example,
has called Le Nouveau Monde amoreux a
"phallocentric utopi[a]" which "aim[s] at the subjugation of the
feminine."[13] A just observation, and yet a problematic
one, for it had been Fourier himself who had coined the word
"féminisme"![14]
True,
the word did not migrate to English for another half-century, and it is
unlikely that Fuller encountered it in
As a general
thesis: Social progress and transformations of Period occur as a result of
the progress of women towards liberty, and declines in the social Order occur
as a result of a decrease in the liberty of women.
Other events influence
these political vicissitudes, but no other cause produces social progress or
decline so rapidly. As I have already
said, the adoption of closed seraglios would quickly transform us into Barbarians,
and the opening of the seraglios would suffice to bring the Barbarians into
Civilization. To summarize: the
extension of women's privileges is the general principle of all social
progress. (OC 1:132-133)
Indeed, this principle is restated in the preface to Woman in the Nineteenth Century: "I
believe that the development of [man] cannot be effected without that of
[woman]" (W19C 245). This sentiment had been anticipated by the
Brook Farmer Marianne Dwight, who after some comments on Fourier, advised her
friend Anna Parsons to "[t]ake a spiritual view of the matter":
Raise woman to be the equal of man, and
what intellectual developments may we not expect? How the whole aspect of society will be
changed! And this is the great work, is
it not, that Association in its present early stage has to do? (Dwight to Anna Parsons, qtd., Sams 122)
In order to bring this equality about, Fuller borrowed
Fourier's formula for the workplace: one-third of all positions in
"masculine pursuits" should be allocated to women who desire them,
just as one-third of all "feminine" duties were reserved for men (W19C 346)
Woman's
equality would also require a retooling of the marital institution, Fourier
argued. His "amorous
corporations" called for two fundamental reforms: first, the recognition
of women's "amorous majority" at age 18, "emancipating them
. . . from the humiliation of being put up for sale, and being
obliged to do without men until some unknown comes to buy them and marry
them" (OC 1:133). He argued that the current marital system, in
which the economic interest of other parties played a far greater role in
picking a mate than the woman's own desires, forced young girls to disguise
their conduct with a "varnish of chastity," inevitably resulting in
"universal Cuckoldry" (OC
1:137, 135). Such passages may well have
been Fuller's inspiration for a recurring argument in Woman: prostitutes are not depraved, but the products of a depraved
society.
Fuller's
evolution from the Fourier-inflenced feminism of Woman to the socialism of the Tribune
dispatches seems natural enough: a movement from one critique of domination to
another. But why was she first
interested in Fourier's visionary doctrine of the aromal? One possible answer is suggested by Ednah Dow
Littlehale Cheney's description of the effect that Fuller's Conversations had
had on her:
I found myself in a new world of
thought; a flood of light irradiated all that I had seen in nature, observed in
life, or read in books. Whatever she
spoke of revealed a hidden meaning, and everything seemed to be put into true
relation. Perhaps I could best express
it by saying that I was no longer the limitation of myself, but I felt that the
whole wealth of the universe was opened to me.
(qtd., Capper 305-306)
Within this typically Romantic rhetoric one detects the
oceanic feeling once again, the description of the subject's loss of ego
boundaries and expansion into the universe.
If the irrationalism of the Conversations had opened new vistas for
Cheney, then the irrationalism of Fourier's aromal may have offered similar
experiences to Fuller.
This
is not to say that Fuller was convinced that the "aromal state"
explained the phenomena of clairvoyance and mesmerism. Her interest in mesmerism during this period
is well-known: she even received regular mesmeric treatments in the spring of
1845 (Stoehr 216-217). Yet her interest
in these pseudosciences might better be seen as mere flirtations with
irrationality. As "Free Hope"
responded to the Emersonian "Self-Poise,"
To me it seems that it is madder never
to abandon oneself, than often to be infatuated; better to be wounded, a
captive, and a slave, than always to walk in armor. As to magnetism, that is only a matter of
fancy. You sometimes need just such a
field in which to wander vagrant . . . . (SL
148)
Perhaps Fuller was not espousing the Fourierist arcana
or vouching for the authenticity of Die
Seherin von Prevorst; rather, she simply found them interesting fields to
wander in.
Fuller's
male counterparts were more uptight in their responses to visionary Fourierism:
Brownson had to damn it, Emerson had to dissect it relentlessly, and poor James
adopted it as one of his creeds. The
romantic synthesizer Fuller simply saw Fourier as a kindred spirit; she was not
obsessed by the details.
Hyper-intellectual that she was, Fuller nevertheless realized that an
intellectual response to visionary Fourierism was inappropriate—a point that
was largely lost on her male friends.
Furthermore,
keeping in mind that Chasseguet-Smirgel (after Freud) diagnoses paranoia as a
male disease, it is interesting to compare Fuller's attitude towards sexual
liberation with that of her male counterparts.
Her erotic life was largely compressed into the last five years of her
life: her affair with James Nathan, her pursuit of the young Associationist
Thomas Hicks[16],
and of course her relationship with Ossoli, only legally formalized after the
birth of Angelo (Deiss 292-293). But
Emerson struggled to repress the obvious truth about her life, as in this
well-known journal entry made while he was co-editing Fuller's memoirs:
Marriage
W.H.C[hanning] fancied that M had not
married: that a legal tie was contrary to her view of a noble life. I, on the contrary, believed that she would
speculate on this subject as all reformers do; but when it came to be a
practical question to herself, she would feel that this was a tie which ought
to have every solemnest sanction; that against the theorist was a vast public
opinion, too vast to brave; an opinion of all nations & of all ages. (JMN 11:463)
Emerson's
repression, similar to his repression of Caroline Sturgis's carnal desires, may
have been motivated by a greater concern than propriety. As we saw, members of the Transcendentalist
circle felt the attraction of free love, even Emerson. Yet the men had a vested interest in holding
on to the patriarchal structure, unlike Fuller, who insisted upon the necessity
of institutional change. Possibly these
men worked out a psychic compromise. In
their heads, they enjoyed the erotic fantasy of free love, as well as universal
socialism, eros in the larger sense. For
this purpose, the repressed Transcendentalists could have picked no better
masters than Swedenborg and Fourier, the masters of intellectualizing sexual
experience. (Depending on the nature of
Fourier's "sapphianism," it is even possible that both men died
virgins.) But in the world outside the
psyche, the men in the Transcendentalist circle struggled to hold on to their
patriarchal privileges. For example,
James's 1852 renunciation of free love was accompanied by a reactionary
anti-feminism which held, in Habegger's characterization, that "woman is
subservient, secondary, and inferior to man," and marriage was based on a
doctrine of force, "antediluvian brutality" (F 333, 334). From this
reactionary point of view, then, Fuller's personal life had to be
misrepresented. For her was substituted
the lifeless Zenobia, the abstract theoretician, the crystal removed from life.
[1]Here
are representative snippets from Fuller's correspondence: "I hear much of
Frank [Francis G. Shaw] in Fourierite Association" (Fuller to Sarah Shaw, 25 Feb. 1845, LMF 4:51). "My dear Marcus . . . . I have become an enthusiastic Socialist;
elsewhere is no comfort, no solution for the problems of the times"
(Fuller to Marcus and Rebecca Buffum Spring, 12 Dec. 1849, LMF 5:295).
[4]"
[5]I
regret not having the opportunity to consult the recently-published final
volume of Robert N. Hudspeth's Letters of
Margaret Fuller.
[6]LMF 2:180. Fuller's familiarity with such an amusing
detail as the "phalanx of juvenile florists" suggests that
[8]Zwarg,
"Footnoting"; see OC
3:163-177, the second volume of TUU,
misidentified in "Footnoting" as the third volume.
[10]On
Mesmer's possible influence on Fourier, see Zwarg, "Footnoting" 632;
on the Restif-Fourier connection, see Poster 132-138; Viatte 263-268.
[11]W19C 247. Jeffrey Steele correctly identifies the
reference; his gloss, however, is skewed by a typical materialist misreading:
"Fuller adds a psychological concept to [Harmony] by using the term to
refer to an ideal state in which the different facets of a person's being are
in balance" (EssMF 452n5).
[12]Granted,
in light of Emerson's 11 April 1844 letter to Fuller—see Chapter 5—the
provisional advocacy of "Free Hope" may well have been based on an
earlier letter from Fuller, but the creation of the allegorical character
insulated her from direct public endorsement of the aromal.
[14]Goldstein
92n10, Altman 291n1. Today's numerous anti-feminists
might be tempted to emulate Dühring and Daniel Bell. Just as these two exploited Fourier's status
as ur-socialist in an attempt to portray socialism as irrational, others might
similarly dismiss feminism as having been "invented" by a crackpot,
passing silently over earlier feet-on-the-ground feminists (e.g.,
Wollstonecraft). And since Fourier was
also the first to use "science sociale" in its modern sense
(see Shapiro), should the social sciences also be abolished?
Also, Blashak's characterization
calls to mind an interesting parallel.
French feminists of the 1970s were made uncomfortable by their white
fathers Derrida and Lacan, their theoretical presence a reminder that the
patriarchy had not been escaped (Jardine).
For similar reasons, some feminists might find the recognition of
Fourier's proto-feminism strategically undesirable. Blashak's abstract valorizes "Cixous'
vision of a lesbian utopia" as "a strategic alternative to the phallocentric
conditions that still operate today"; so far, no problem. But the valorization is at the expense of
Fourier's utopia, one in which the "unconscious lesbian" would become
conscious of her desires (qtd.,