Finding Margaret Fuller: A Novel

By summer, Margaret is ready to tackle the next phase of her life. Waldo has arranged a teaching job for her with Hiram Fuller of the Green Street School in Rhode Island, who will pay her $1,000 a year ($34,000 current value). On the day she leaves, Waldo makes her promise to return to Concord for a visit.

In the fall of 1837, Margaret settles into her new life in Providence. She rents a room at a boarding house and walks three miles each way to the school, where she teaches 60 girls. Hiram teaches 60 boys in an adjoining classroom. Margaret notes, “I fill their hours with Latin, history, ethics, composition, recitation, and elocution” (115). She enjoys interacting with bright, young female minds. In the spring, Hiram brings word that Queen Victoria has ascended to the British throne. The students are excited to know that a woman will rule the world’s greatest empire for the first time in 300 years. In Margaret’s correspondence with Waldo, she promises to return to Concord for the month of July.

When Margaret arrives at the Emerson home, she learns that Waldo plans to gather other friends there as well. He arranges for Nathaniel to board nearby and offers to help the Alcott family afford their former home in town. Margaret thinks, “All our great Sage seems to want in return is that we think and write and inspire one another to create” (119). That evening, a lively discussion ensues about the divine inspiration that nature affords the human soul.

Later, Thoreau leads the Alcott girls to town to see a traveling carnival that includes a live giraffe. Margaret and Nathaniel join them. They’re awestruck by the spectacle of the enormous creature. Back at home, Waldo is still awake, and he asks Margaret to stroll over to Walden Pond to watch the sun rise. Margaret recalls her earlier comments about the divinity in nature and thinks, “Here, in this very moment, standing beside Waldo at the end of this night, my soul does feel as though it could touch the divine” (125).

The next day, Margaret encounters Lidian preparing food baskets for the church. Margaret volunteers to help fill the baskets and accidentally stumbles across a note that Lidian has written called The Transcendentalists’ Ten Commandments (127). The edicts castigate the intellectual elites who think more of a sunrise than of caring for the poor. Lidian tells Margaret that she is different. “I am the one who in fact lives my life for something larger than myself […] I am the one raising the young of our own species. I am in fact working to make the world a more […] just place” (128). Margaret feels the rebuke keenly and perceives herself as a dilettante compared to the charitable Lidian.

She is still dejected when she later encounters Waldo, who encourages her to overcome her lack of purpose by writing a book. Waldo himself is facing criticism for his book The American Scholar. Its emphasis on independent thought has stirred the ire of academia and religious leaders. Harvard has shunned him, and his books are being banned in Boston. Waldo says, “I won’t be cowed […] I must be free and brave. I know that what we are doing here is pure and good. And needed” (133). Waldo’s words inspire Margaret to shrug off Lidian’s criticism and begin writing a book. She plans to translate Goethe’s Conversations into English. The following morning, Lidian tells Margaret that she’s expecting a second child.

By the fall of 1838, Margaret quits her teaching job and retires to the family farm in Groton to begin writing full time. She helps her mother during the winter with the smaller children and completes the sad task of sorting through her father’s papers. Margaret is surprised when her mother announces that they can no longer afford to stay on the property. Margaret’s uncles are in charge of her late father’s estate, and they refuse to raise her mother’s allowance. The family must sell and move out by spring. By the time spring returns, Margaret completes her translation and sends the manuscript off to Waldo’s publisher friend, George Ripley. Margaret notes, “I will be a published writer. I will have a book, and perhaps even a check. And with that, I hope, I will have a new freedom to travel into the world. And perhaps, someday, the power to change that world” (139).

After arranging the sale of the farm and moving her family to comfortable quarters in Jamaica Plain, Margaret is ready to enjoy the summer in Concord. Her book has been published and is a great success. The money it earns will further help her family. Once again, she’s free to spend time with the transcendental circle in the Emerson home. Lidian is now too preoccupied with her son and new daughter to perceive Margaret as a threat. Nathaniel returns and resumes his flirtation with Margaret. Waldo has offered to subsidize Nathaniel’s rental of the Old Manse so that he can write in a less oppressive atmosphere than Salem.

Margaret is surprised when Waldo tells her that Nathaniel is planning to marry a self-effacing girl named Sophia Peabody even though he’s clearly attracted to Margaret. Waldo tells her, “Nathaniel has always been taken with you. But Sophia…well, we know what Sophia is like. I suppose…if you and Nathaniel, well—it would mean one too many bright stars in the Hawthorne constellation” (147). Margaret concludes that she must find her purpose and happiness elsewhere than in the Concord circle.