Toward A Female Genealogy Of Transcendentalism ed. by Jana L. Argersinger and Phyllis Cole (review)

[Errata]

Transcendentalism, in its heyday and in its historiographical iterations, has existed as a literary, philosophical, socio-political, and religious movement. Its figures are iconic; their influence has persisted in an age of soundbites, diminishing attention spans, and constant innovation. Ralph Waldo Emerson is as quotable now as he was during the mythical annus mirabilis. Often missing from both cultural and scholarly accounts, however, are the voices of the “Exaltadas,” the women who answered Margaret Fuller’s enjoinder to better the world around them by first bettering their spiritual and intellectual selves. With the exception of Margaret Fuller and more recently Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, women often appear as shadowy figures in the story of Transcendentalism. Classically, historical accounts have portrayed female Transcendentalists as conversation partners with the prominent men of the movement, who serve as critics and respondents to the writings of Emerson, Ripley, Thoreau, and Alcott. However, as this exceptional set of essays reveals, they were not merely peripheral players, but active contributors to and practitioners of Transcendentalism from its inception (and as the chapters on Sophia Ripley and Mary Moody Emerson reveal, even before that).

Editors Jana Argersinger and Phyllis Cole state at the outset that Toward a Female Genealogy of Transcendentalism is a “project of archeology and reinterpretation” (7). Thus, the first stated goal of such work is a project of recovery. Moving beyond the traditional canon, many of the essays examine documents and people who have gone unnoticed. Eric Gardner, in his excellent chapter on Edmonia Goodelle Highgate, explores the influence of Transcendentalism on an African-American woman whose writings employ concepts of self-actualization and individualized divinity to move toward racial equality and community activism. Remarking on the notable absence of both black and female Transcendentalism, Gardner notes, “[this] unspoken narrative of absence needs to be spoken” (278). In another foray into recovery, the chapter “What Did Margaret Think of George?” examines the little known poem, “The Magnolia of Lake Pontchar-train,” to reveal George Sand’s influence on Margaret Fuller. Though by no means an unknown, the chapter tells the story of Fuller’s intellectual origins as a product of womanly, not solely male influence.

Such projects of recovery are accompanied with attempts to reinterpret the lives and writings of the Exaltadas. Laura Dow Wallis counters the traditional narrative, which paints Louisa May Alcott as the victim of her father Bronson Alcott’s mercurial and overly-ambitious schemes. Louisa, argues Wallis, was certainly the product of her father’s cosmopolitan “laboratory,” but one for whom the European, especially German, philosophical and economic ideals would serve as the models for the heroes and heroines of her most famous works (425). And in her chapter on Caroline Dall, Helen Deese recasts the burgeoning field of the social science as a uniquely feminist endeavor, revealing Dall’s penchant for merging statistics and women’s elevation.

These are but a sampling of the tremendous offerings of this interdisciplinary group of authors. This interdisciplinarity may have the unintended effect of making the audience of the book difficult to cast; some chapters grounded in literary theory may not appeal to historians or other chapters steeped in religious terminology may not grab political scientists. However, the intention of the book is clearly to cull scholars from a number of different disciplines to show both the scope of scholarly interest and the number of fields that examine Transcendentalism. Perhaps all this portends is that more books on the Exaltadas are needed, which can then address the needs of singular disciplines. This book is a beginning that is long overdue. Here’s hoping that it is the first of many.