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The Storied Facts of Margaret Fuller Haverford College Haverford Scholarship Faculty Publications English 1996 The Storied Facts of Margaret Fuller Christina Zwarg Haverford College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.haverford.edu/english_facpubs Repository Citation Zwarg, Christina. "The Storied Facts of Margaret Fuller." New England Quarterly 69.1 (1996): 128-42. Print. This Journal Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English at Haverford Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Haverford Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Review: The Storied Facts of Margaret Fuller Author(s): Christina Zwarg Review by: Christina Zwarg Source: The New England Quarterly, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Mar., 1996), pp. 128-142 Published by: The New England Quarterly, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/366307 Accessed: 28-04-2015 18:37 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The New England Quarterly, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The New England Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 165.82.124.14 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 18:37:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Essay Review THE STORIED FACTS OF MARGARET FULLER CHRISTINA ZWARG MargaretFuller: An AmericanRomantic Life, The PrivateYears. By CharlesCapper. (New York:Oxford University Press. 1992. Pp. ix, 423. $39.95.) Earthof our pot I smasheddogs me fourflights- youare yourbiographer's best American woman ... -Robert Lowell "To MargaretFuller Drowned" AFTER I finishedwriting a book on MargaretFuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson,the Haverfordprovost asked me to share my researchinterests with students, faculty, and othermembers of the college community.'Given the recentspate of publicationsabout Fuller, includingBell Chevigny'srevised and importantanthology, RobertHudspeth's completed edition of her letters,and the award- winningbiography by CharlesCapper, I foundmyself inclined to re- flectupon Fuller'svarious "returns" to historicalmemory.2 The talk elaboratedthat theme for a good fiftyminutes, and at itsclose a num- ber ofengaging questions emerged from the audience. Perhaps two of the mostchallenging were asked by scientists,though the power of theirquestions did notresonate for me untilI tookin handthe task of reviewingCapper's book. The firstquestion came froma chemistwho asked fora briefac- countof Fuller'sfamily background to help himground my narrative of her work.Remembering how oftendetails of Fuller'slife had de- railed a deeper understandingof her writing,I challengedmy col- league to considerthe value ofhis inquiry as a guideto herthinking. I startleda fewpeople in the audiencewhen I did so, and I believe I 'FeministConversations: Fuller, Emerson and the Play of Reading(Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress, 1995). 2Bell Gale Chevigny,Margaret Fuller's Life and Writings:The Woman and the Myth(Boston: NortheasternUniversity Press, 1994); RobertN. Hudspeth,ed., The Lettersof Margaret Fuller, vols. 1-6 (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1983-95). 128 This content downloaded from 165.82.124.14 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 18:37:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ESSAY REVIEW 129 startleda fewmore when I made it clearthat I wouldonly be able to followa narrativeof the patrilinealdescent in anycoherent way and thereforepreferred not to givea directanswer to the question.A sec- ond query was posed by a physicist,who asked most sincerelyif "Fuller had any significantideas" thatwould help him more readily understandher returnto history.Having spoken for fifty minutes on thatvery topic, I was stunnedby the question.Brushing aside the worrisomeimplication that I had been wastingeveryone's time with mytalk, I did mybest to reviewthe contentsof mylecture in a few quick mouthfuls,laboring to make Fuller'scomplex, theoretical con- cernsstill more accessibleto thiseclectic, general audience. I could have dismissedmy colleague's query as a forlornreminder of the breachbetween the "two cultures," but laterthe ideas generatedby a carefulreading of Capper's book made me realize thatthe second question,like the first,deserved a morecareful, if not elaborate,re- sponsethan the one I had musteredat themoment of its asking. Nevertheless,I made littleheadway on these mattersuntil I en- countereda reviewof a recentDarwin biography by GeorgeLevine, a well-knownliterary critic.3 In his review,Levine considered the value Darwin'slife narrative might hold for an understandingof his science. Levine'slively engagement with this issue drewme to anotherof his essays on Victorianscientific autobiography where he describesin greaterdetail how the rise of positivismmade it possibleto imagine thata scientist'sauthority depended upon the"death" of his subjectiv- ity.4Levine showsfar more subtly than I can demonstratehere how thissecularized understanding of scientificauthority both paralleled and challengedequally secularized notions of individual authority and creativity.The conflictingimperatives of theseperspectives and their consequencesfor narrative form came to a head when accomplished theoristslike Darwin indulgedin autobiography.In such cases, the storyof a lifeand the storyof a scientificdiscovery became entwined so completelythat the fine line between subjectiveand objective truthsblurred in compellingand, in Levine's handling,instructive ways. Thinkingthrough this material, I saw how the two questionsfrom the scientificcommunity at Haverfordemerged from these largely 3GeorgeLevine, "Darwin Revised, and Carefully Edited," Configurations 1 (1994): 191-202,a reviewof Adrian Desmond and James Moore's Darwin (New York: Warner Books,1991). 4GeorgeLevine, "Objectivity and Death: Victorian Scientific Autobiography," Victo- rianLiterature and Culture20 (1993): 273-91. This content downloaded from 165.82.124.14 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 18:37:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 130 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY unresolvedperspectives and thatboth perspectives would come into playas I discussedmy response to Capper'sbook. The chemistasking for more biographicalinformation no doubt found my resistance strange,since he had deployeda traditionalhumanistic assumption concerningthe value of one's backgroundwhen he inquiredabout Fuller's family.When I asked him to considerhow such reassuring narrativesare oftenskewed by less than objectivecultural assump- tions,my responsetook on a strangelyscientific character. (Indeed, thisquest forgreater "objectivity" has resultedin the introductionof theoryto literarystudies.) As a literarycritic enmeshed in theory,I foundit easyto suggestthat the fictionof identity upon which he was dependingneeded reassessment(though I did notmean to implythat it shouldbe dismissed).With this response, the secondquestioner no doubt feltjustified in his demand foran accountof the "real" sub- stanceof Fuller'sintellectual legacy. Asking whether or not she had any"significant ideas" seemedlike a fairquestion. Readingabout the legacy of positivism for narrative form, I realized that I could no more establisha familiarnarrative for the second questionerthan I could forthe first,since the storyof Fuller'swork does notresemble anything like the storyof Darwin'stheory of evolu- tion.Nor could I formulateher as a greatsystem builder in the man- ner of many well-known,nineteenth-century thinkers, Marx and Freud among them,for Fuller's mostvaluable contributionto the world of analysisemerged in the intersticesof familiardisciplinary boundaries,including the boundariessharpening in the nineteenth centurybetween the authorityof individualexperience and the au- thorityof objective truth. It is arguablethat Fuller's "phantom" hovers over today'scritical scene because we onlynow begin to findthose boundariessafe to cross, thoughmy experienceat Haverfordre- mindedme thatsuch crossingsare stillmore redoubtablethan I at firstunderstood. I had no usefulor recognizablefiction of identity for eitherof myscientific friends-not one forFuller's lifenor forher work. I could noteven makeFuller easier to understandby calling her an artistin the traditionalsense of the term. Nor could I call her a womanwriter in the now familiarsense; neithera GeorgeSand nora GeorgeEliot, Fuller eschewed the lifeof a poet as well. I mighthave been contentto describeher as an "intellectualprophet in the mode of her difficultmentors Carlyle and Emerson,"as Capper does in his biography.But I knew frommy own workwith Emerson thatwe needed a slightlymore extravagantcharacterization than this to de- This content downloaded from 165.82.124.14 on Tue, 28 Apr 2015 18:37:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ESSAY REVIEW 131 scribe her work faithfully.No one saw this categoricalimperative morekeenly than Emerson, who attemptedto distancehimself from Carlyle'snarrative style in hisown account of Fuller'senigmatic force. In answeringmy physicist colleague, and in mylecture, I empha- sized theway Fuller had changedour understandingof the process of analysisitself by focusingon
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