Katharine Anthony's _Margaret Fuller_ is biography in new and
fascinating form. "A psychological biography," Miss Anthony calls it,
and she takes advantage of the theories of Freud and Jung to reveal new
facts about the life of a woman long dead, by the process of submitting
well known material to the psychoanalytic test. This is an engrossing
game. There is something about it quite suggestive of the contrast
between Sherlock Holmes and the more dull-witted detectives of Scotland
Yard. Holmes, you remember, could come into a room after all the members
of the force had pawed the evidence and interpret something new from the
cigar ash on the table which had been to them just cigar ash, but was to
Holmes convincing evidence that the crime had been committed by a
red-haired man, six feet in height, born in Kentucky and an enrolled
member of the Democratic Party. Other biographers were content to record
the fact that Margaret Fuller was a nervous child who received all her
early education at home from her father. There they paused, and it is
just here that Miss Anthony leaps in to explain the exact emotional
relation between father and daughter which simmered about in Margaret's
subconsciousness and contributed to the convulsions of her early
schooldays.
It is fascinating to watch the skilled biographer reveal all sorts of
facts about Margaret Fuller of which she herself had not the ghost of a
notion. We can't say that the theory of the biographer is always
convincing, although we must admit that her case is full and logical at
every turn. To us it is just a little too logical. There is so much
proof that we are rather inclined to believe that the theory is not
altogether so. It is only fair to admit that Margaret seems to have been
a Freudian herself long before there was a Freud. Again and again her
own observations, quick, intuitive leaps, coincide almost exactly with
theories worked out later by much more difficult and rational processes.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, also, seems to have had some conception of the
unconscious quite consistent with the most modern theorists, for he
records a conversation between himself and Margaret Fuller in which they
talked about "the experiences of early childhood, whose influence
remains upon the character after the recollection of them has passed
away."
Margaret Fuller, laboratory specimen, is an interesting study; Margaret
Fuller, feminist, an inspiring figure in American history; but most of
all our interest is captured by that portion of the book which deals
with Margaret Fuller, literary critic of _The New York Tribune_. She
wrote three critical articles a week, which appeared on the first page
of the paper, and since her day newspaper reviewing has gone back in
other respects than the mere process of burying itself more deeply
within the paper. Opinions about books seem to have been more exciting
and provocative in the days of Margaret Fuller and Horace Greeley. At
any rate, one or the other wrote an article in _The Tribune_ which
inspired a libel suit by James Fenimore Cooper in which he won a verdict
of $200. Nothing like that happens to-day. Once we managed to incite an
actor into a lawsuit, but the only sign of recognition which we ever
obtain from belaboring an author is a telephone message or a letter
saying that our adverse notice has amused him very much and greatly
contributed to the sale of his little book and would we come around and
have lunch.
Miss Fuller managed to cut deeper. James Russell Lowell never recovered
from the shock of her poor opinion of him, and was forever lampooning
her in public life and private. She seems to have been singularly free
from awe for the great literary figures of her day. In an age when not
liking Longfellow was almost as much a mark of national treason as
urging a reduction in the German indemnity would be to-day Miss Fuller
wrote of Longfellow in exactly the spirit in which he is regarded by the
later critics who looked at him dispassionately.
"When we see a person of moderate powers," she wrote, "receive honors
which should be reserved for the highest, we feel somewhat like
assailing him and taking from him the crown which should be reserved for
grander brows. And yet this is, perhaps, ungenerous.... He (Longfellow)
has no style of his own, growing out of his experiences and observations
of nature. Nature with him, whether human or external, is always seen
through the windows of literature.... This want of the free breath of
nature, this perpetual borrowing of imagery, this excessive, because
superficial, culture which he has derived from an acquaintance with the
elegant literature of many nations and men, out of proportion to the
experience of life within himself, prevent Mr. Longfellow's verses from
ever being a true refreshment to ourselves."
Ralph Waldo Emerson was her close friend, and yet she could see him
clearly enough from a critical point of view to write: "We doubt this
friend raised himself too early to the perpendicular, and did not lie
along the ground long enough to hear the whispers of our parent life. We
would wish he might be thrown by conflicts on the lap of Mother Earth,
to see if he would not rise again with added powers."
* * *
The feminism of Margaret Fuller is passionate and far reaching. It does
not stop merely with the plea for the vote, but includes a newer and
freer ideal of marriage. There is inspiration in this, and yet
something a little disturbing in the article which she wrote about the
London Reform Club, in which she said: "I was not sorry, however, to see
men predominant in the cooking department, as I hope to see that and
washing transferred to their care in the progress of things, since they
are 'the stronger sex.'"