Margaret Fuller, Wandering Pilgrim

Part Two: The Transition Years

45 The Transition Years In her autobiographical romance Fuller says that the “peculiarity” of her early education deprived her of her childhood. Though seldom allowed to play with the neighborhood children in the marshland surrounding her house, she occasionally joined them in their games, but even then, she recollects, she preferred “violent bodily exercise” to their less-demanding play. The girls “did not hate me,” Fuller recalls, “but neither did they . . . wish me to have them with me.” She tells how her father decided “I needed change of scene.” He blamed himself for keeping her at home because in teaching her he gained, Margaret recollects he said, “such pleasure .” Thus began Margaret’s more formal schooling away from home: first at a school in downtown Boston and then at a finishing school in Groton. No sooner, however, had Timothy learned that in either case the school had not successfully, as he had hoped, “feminized” his daughter, than he called her home.1 Upon returning from school in Groton, Margaret in these transition years between adolescence and adulthood pursued a self-imposed plan of study of languages and literature, a fact that pleased Timothy, who nonetheless continued to insist that his daughter excel not only in her studies, a pursuit then seen by society as masculine, but also in her feminine deportment. But what mattered most to Margaret was always the life of the mind. Her studies suddenly came alive for her when in the summer of 1826 she found herself living in close proximity to the brilliant young men studying at Harvard and bringing home from their European travels the radical ideas of the German Romantics, for Timothy that summer moved his family from the Cambridgeport house to a mansion that had been built by the late Chief Justice Francis Dana. Perched atop a hill (called Dana Hill), it was located about a quarter mile from the college. During this period of relative prosperity for Timothy Fuller, his daughter—with the help of her Cambridge friends—metamorphosed from an odd aggressive girl lacking social skills into a brilliant young woman, a captivating and powerful presence. As ever full of contradictions , Timothy unrelentingly demanded that his daughter excel in her studies— part t wo ...