Phalanx on a Hill: Responses to Fourierism in the Transcendentalist Circle
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Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1995 Phalanx on a Hill: Responses to Fourierism in the Transcendentalist Circle William Hall Brock Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Brock, William Hall, "Phalanx on a Hill: Responses to Fourierism in the Transcendentalist Circle" (1995). Dissertations. 3543. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/3543 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1995 William Hall Brock LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO PHALANX ON A HILL: RESPONSES TO FOURIERISM IN THE TRANSCENDENTALIST CIRCLE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH BY WILLIAM HALL BROCK CHICAGO, ILLINOIS MAY 1995 Copyright by William Hall Brock, 1995 All rights reserved. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project would not have been possible without the support of many others. First, it would be difficult to imagine a more supportive committee than Paul Jay, James E. Rocks, and Carl J. Guarneri. I am also indebted to many scholars, colleagues, and friends: Bin Liu, Paul Catterson, Frazier Cole, Suzanne Gossett, John Hoffman, Alan Kozlowski, Thomas Kaminski, Stephanie Mcintyre, Jeff Nealon, Mike Perkovich, Joel Porte, Marian Staats, Steven Wartofsky, Christina Zwarg, and others. Most of the research was funded by a dissertation fellowship from Loyola University. My mother, Margaret Brock, and my in-laws, Robert and Mary Lou Nicolay, supported me in many ways. And to Claire Nicolay, I owe everything. iii Schreber's 'rays of God' are in reality nothing else than a concrete representation and projection outwards of libidinal cathexes; and they thus lend his delusions a striking conformity with our theory. [The] details of Schreber' s delusional structure sound almost like endopsychic perceptions of the processes whose existence I have assumed in these pages as the basis of our explanation of paranoia. It remains for the future to decide whether there is more delusion in my theory than I should like to admit, or whether there is more truth in Schreber' s delusion than other people are as yet prepared to believe. -Sigmund Freud Fourier je te salue du Grand Canon du Colorado -Andre Breton TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii ABBREVIATIONS vi Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION . 1 2. THE "INSANITY" OF AMERICAN FOURIERISM 19 3. THREADS THAT CONNECT THE STARS: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND UTOPIAN IDEOLOGY . • • . • . • . • . • 48 4. UNPARDONABLE SINS: ORESTES BROWNSON'S CRUSADE AGAINST FOURIERISM • • • • . • . • . • . • 90 5. "IS THE THING REALLY DESIRABLE?": EMERSON'S RECEPTION OF FOURIERISM • . 152 6. THE SWEDENBORGIANIZED FOURIERISM OF HENRY JAMES, SR.: A STUDY IN PATHOLOGY ..•. 218 7. MARGARET FULLER, PRAGMATIC FOURIERIST 253 8. THE END OF SPECTROPOETICS: BLITHEDALE AND AFTER . • • 270 WORKS CITED • 309 VITA 328 v ABBREVIATIONS Nathaniel Hawthorne, American Notebooks. Bos QR Boston Quarterly Review. Brownson's Quarterly Review. CWRWE The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson [1971- ] . DernRev United States Magazine and Democratic Review. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays and Lectures, ed. Joel Porte. Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, The Ego Ideal. Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel and Bela Grunberger, Freud or Reich? Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson. PV Parke Godwin, A Popular View of the Doctrines of Charles Fourier. F Alfred Habegger, The Father: A Life of Henry James, Sr. The Harbinger. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. The London Phalanx. LRWE The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works. N Nathaniel Hawthorne, Novels [Library of America] Charles Fourier, Nouveau Monde Industriel [vol. 6 of OC] . vi Oeuvres completes de Charles Fourier. The Phalanx. Albert Brisbane, Social Destiny of Man [1840] . The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Henri Desroche, La Societe festive. Charles Fourier, Theorie des guatre mouvements [vol . 1 of OC] . Charles Fourier, Theorie de l'unite -===-==-=-=-='-----~--=-"~~-=---==-==-= universelle [vols. 2-5 of OC] The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson [Centenary Edition] . Works of Orestes A. Brownson. See bibliography for full citations of the above texts. vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Andre Breton did not discover Fourier until 1940, when he was marooned in New York during World War II. In the summer of 1945, the surrealist poet threw Fourier's collected works in the back seat and set out on a cross-country trip to Reno, where he would divorce, remarry, and begin the Ode a Charles Fourier. Later Breton suggested that the poem "contains something of the very strange atmosphere . where slot machines . line the walls of food-shops and post-offices alike, gathering round them in a vague kind of way the crowd of those aspiring to a new conjugal life, the cow-boys and the last gold prospectors" (qtd., White n.p.) Leaving Reno later that summer, Breton made a tour of Southwestern Pueblo communities. Presumably bypassing Los Alamos, he wandered through Arizona and New Mexico, all the while reading Fourier's Theorie des Quatre Mouvements and continuing work on the Ode. Even as the events of that terrible year surfaced in the poem, Breton insisted upon Fourier's relevance for his time-and for the land in which he found himself. One century earlier, in another time of crisis, there had been many Americans who would have agreed with him. 2 When the socialist Charles Fourier died in 183 7, one might have supposed that his utopian dream would have perished with him. In fact, however, his French disciples successfully promoted Fourierism by stressing its critique of social structures that unjustly empowered a small class, its belief in the goodness of human passions, and its faith in Association, a new method of social organization that would give free rein to the passions and make work enjoyable. By implementing this reform, they hoped to create "Harmony," a perfectly-organized society. 1 One such disciple was the American Albert Brisbane, a former student of Fourier's who introduced the movement to America with his popularization Social Destiny of Man (1840) . His ensuing propaganda campaign created a small but influential American audience for Fourier's works. At this time, Fourier's three major works, originally published between 1808 and 1829, were republished by the French Fourierists: the aforementioned Quatre mouvements (1841); the Traite de l' Association Domestigue Agricole, republished with the less unassuming title Theorie de l'Unite Universelle (4 vols., 1841-1843); and Le Nouveau 1 Throughout this dissertation, a general acquaintance with Fourier's theory and the history of the Fourierist movement is assumed. In English, the two best introductions to Fourier are Beecher's biography and the Beecher/Bienvenu anthology. On the French Fourierist movement, see Desroche, La Societe festive [SF] . 3 Monde Industriel et Societaire (1845) . 2 These volumes, as well as numerous tracts by Fourier's French disciples, were available in the United States, as evidenced by advertisements in the major American Fourierist periodicals, The Phalanx (1843-1845) and its successor, The Harbinger (1845-1849). Brisbane, ever the promoter, pushed copies into the hands of those he felt might be receptive. In the early 1840s, several key American Fourierist, or Associationist, leaders, including Brisbane, Horace Greeley, and Parke Godwin, made the acquaintance of members j ~ Transcendentalist circle. 3 In doing so, the Associationists were partially motivated by the desire to get free publicity. (Orestes Brownson edited his Boston Quarterly Review until 1842, then wrote for the Democratic Review, as did Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Dial, of course, was edited by Margaret Fuller, then Ralph Waldo Emerson. Henry James, Sr., wrote for, and underwrote, The Harbinger. All four magazines published articles by Brisbane. 4 ) Yet Brisbane also believed 2The republication history of Fourier's books is complex; see SF 14 for a useful schematic representation. Two other books by Fourier, Pieges et Charlatanisme des deux sectes Saint-Simon et Owen (1831) and La Fausse Industrie (1835-36), were not republished by the French Fourierists; note that the Anthropos edition of the Oeuvres completes de Charles Fourier (1966-68; 12 vols.) does not include Pieges et Charlatanisme. 3Throughout this study, I use "Transcendentalist circle" in a sociological sense (roughly equivalent to "Emerson's circle") . 4 In chronological order: "Letter from Mr. Brisbane in reply to the Editor's remarks on Mr. Fourier's system," BosQR 4 (Oct. 1841); "On Association and Attractive Industry," 4 that the Transcendentalists' interest in reform, typified by Ripley's Brook Farm experiment, made them potential recruits; indeed, Ripley, Charles A. Dana, John Sullivan Dwight, and William H. Channing led Brook Farm to Fourierism in 1844. Other candidates were not so eager: Brownson, Fuller, James, and Emerson were all exposed to the Fourierist blueprint for utopia, sometimes at great length and against their will. 5 Despite their initial lack of enthusiasm, all these writers belonged to the select group of Fourier's American readers. In an 1844 letter, Fuller told Brownson that Brisbane had offered to lend her a volume of Fourier in Brownson's possession; she asked him to leave it for her at Elizabeth Palmer Peabody's (LMF 3:174). In September of the same year, Fuller read Nouveau monde industriel (LMF 3:175n). Emerson had dipped into Fourier's books in the early 1840s, then read several volumes in early 1845 and discussed them at length with Caroline Sturgis. In the spring of 1845, Sophia Hawthorne and her husband read Fourier's "fourth volume" in the original French; she found it "abominable, immoral, DemRev n.s.