SARAH MARGARET FULLER
(MARCHIONESS OSSOLI)
(1810-1850)
argaret was one of the few persons who looked upon life as an art, and every person not merely as an artist, but as a work of art," wrote Emerson. "She looked upon herself as a living statue, which should always stand on a polished pedestal, with right accessories, and under the most fitting lights. She would have been glad to have everybody so live and act. She was annoyed when they did not, and when they did not regard her from the point of view which alone did justice to her.... It is certain that her friends excused in her, because she had a right to it, a tone which they would have reckoned intolerable in any other." In the coolest way she said to her friends:—
Margaret Fuller
"I take my natural position always: and the more I see, the more I feel that it is regal. Without throne, sceptre, or guards, still a queen....In near eight years' experience I have learned as much as others would in eighty, from my great talent at explanation.... But in truth I have not much to say; for since I have had leisure to look at myself, I find that so far from being an original genius, I have not yet learned to think to any depth; and that the utmost I have done in life has been to form my character to a certain consistency, cultivate my tastes, and learn to tell the truth with a little better grace than I did at first. When I look at my papers I feel as if I had never had a thought that was worthy the attention of any but myself; and 'tis only when on talking with people I find I tell them what they did not know, that my confidence at all returns.... A woman of tact and brilliancy, like me, has an undue advantage in conversation with men. They are astonished at our instincts. They do not see where we got our knowledge; and while they tramp on in their clumsy way, we wheel and fly, and dart hither and thither, and seize with ready eye all the weak points, like Saladin in the desert. It is quite another thing when we come to write, and without suggestion from another mind, to declare the positive amount of thought that is in us.... Then gentlemen are surprised that I write no better, because I talk so well. I have served a long apprenticeship to the one, none to the other. I shall write better, but never, I think, so well as I talk; for then I feel inspired.... For all the tides of life that flow within me, I am dumb and ineffectual when it comes to casting my thought into a form. No old one suits me. If I could invent one, it seems to me the pleasure of creation would make it possible for me to write. What shall I do, dear friend? I want force to be either a genius or a character. One should be either private or public. I love best to be a woman; but womanhood is at present too straitly bounded to give me scope. At hours, I live truly as a woman; at others, I should stifle."