Margaret Fuller, Wandering Pilgrim

46. The Ties That Bind

had written his wife—in a letter Margaret no doubt later read—that he hoped his daughter would not be gone long, “as she needs a parent’s eye now as much as any part of her life.”11 By age ten her childhood had been thus sufficiently distorted that she believed she was “foredoomed to sorrow and pain.” And by the time she arrived at the Prescotts’ school, she was convinced she was a terrible sinner. In Mariana, Fuller created a fictional alter ego who, mocked by classmates, had “let the demon” rise “within her.” The principal calls Mariana to give an account of her behavior but, determined to die, she throws herself on the hearth so hard that she is knocked unconscious. In response to this suicidal gesture, the teacher—who sees “how stained!” is her soul—rescues the “sin-defiled” child by assuring her that “one great fault,” presumably disobedience or pride, “can[not] mar a whole life!”12 The pattern here is of someone’s cruel behavior prompting a “prodigal” child to retaliate with wayward behavior, followed by the child expressing remorse. That pattern appears in a plea Fuller wrote Nathan four days after her 15 April letter accusing him of letting an “ill demon” assault her. Like a bewildered child pleading with an inscrutable, fearful father to forgive her for some great “fault” (a favorite term of Timothy) or sin she feels she has committed, Fuller wrote Nathan, “I will now kneel, and, laying thy dear hand upon my heart, implore that, if pride or suspicion [of his motives] should hide there again,” then she will do all she can “to drive them out.” She asks Nathan to have patience with her “impulses and childish longings.”13 Like the child certain that his or her bad behavior has provoked the adult’s anger, so Fuller sees clearly now, she wrote Nathan on 19 April, that “it is then, indeed, myself who have caused all the ill.” In the pattern of women accustomed to abuse, Fuller confesses in this letter, now eight days after Nathan had approached her sexually—in the same way she was to blame herself again three weeks later— that she believes in her heart she has deserved his disrespectful treatment of her. Secretly fearing her soul is “stained,” she tells him she has “longed for a baptism without to wash off the dust of the world, within, a deep rising of the waters to purify them by motion” (original emphasis).14 46SThe Ties That Bind Fuller’s need to please Nathan (“I am desirous to do as you desire,” she wrote him in May, after she knew he had deceived her) is reminiscent of her need as a child to please Timothy. That and the pain-riddled quality of her love for him suggest that scenes “of strife and pain” occurred in Fuller’s childhood—as does a cryptic remark she made about her childhood in her suggestive 7 October 1833 letter to Clarke: “—It was not time; I had been too sadly cramped—I had not learned The Ties That Bind 277 278 professional woman, private passion enough and must always remain imperfect.”1 Fuller’s words here seem to echo the view of her critical father, who, in his numerous letters to her, never seems pleased with her. Her terrifying fear of being imperfect—her desperate need to be blessed by her cruelly vigilant congressman father—is especially evident in her letters to Nathan, onto whom she transferred not just her positive feelings for her father but also her doubts and dark misgivings regarding his character and motivation. In the process of writing these letters Fuller almost seems to have been reliving painful scenes from her past, even repeating words and phrases she might have said in her interactions with Timothy. One can almost hear the dutiful daughter say, “I have not been good and pure and sweet enough.” “Your hand removes at last the veil from my eyes. It is then, indeed, myself who have caused all the ill.” “My heart . . . knows not how well to bear [pain] from a cherished hand.” But, you “are noble.” “I have paid dear for your love. . . . It was pure.” “I do not mind the pain.”2 Given Nathan’s deceitfulness and sexual aggression toward Fuller, her repeated assertions that he is noble and that their love “was pure” make suspect the accuracy of her perception in her 30 September letter to Nathan...