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Feminist Conversations: Fuller, Emerson, and the Play of Reading by Christina Zwarg. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. Pp. x + 302. $39.95 cloth; $16.95 paper.
Margaret Fuller is best remembered for her influence on others and her conversation rather than for her writing. The tendency among feminists today is to resurrect Fuller's literary writings, but except for Woman in the Nineteenth Century, her writings are not memorable. Much of it, particularly Summer on the Lakes, is slow reading embellished with examples of her vast frame of reference and excellent education (which she liked to flaunt). Fuller's poetry is flat and her lines are apt to be stilted. Fuller does not really know how to tell a story, which is why her writing is most accessible in her journalism and literary reviews. Fuller said that as a Transcendentalist, "she had an active mind frequently busy with large topics" (Letter 1837 to Caroline Sturgis). This is aptly descriptive. For Fuller, conversation was a congenial means for self-expression; for Ralph Waldo Emerson, her most famous friend, conversation was an outgrowth of the sermon and the inherent style of the familiar essay at which he was adept. One could say that they both thought in conversation, but Emerson wrote his out, while Fuller spoke hers, and lost them in air. The loss is ours, and I especially wish that Fuller were available on video tape or CD Rom.
For twenty-five years, feminists and other readers of American literature have been carefully analyzing Fuller's literature and personal correspondence trying to place her in a context showing her importance as writer, theorist, and influence. Christina Zwarg finds fault with some literary critics who, she says, have not taken Fuller as seriously as she does, but her study Feminist Conversations hits the right chords and "seriously" examines Fuller's impact. Her thesis is that Fuller's thought and writing was a determined attempt to gain power by embracing opportunities not open to women, to break from tradition, and to reduce the trappings of patriarchy: in short, to see, feel, and think like a woman. It is difficult to get at Fuller's genius without discussing her life, and because Zwarg's discussion of Fuller's life is scanty, Fuller's invigorating and often unpredictable personality is largely absent.