Biography Essay

Sarah Margaret Fuller's permanence lies in that most intangible quality, herself. Realizing that her position in life would have been different and much higher had she been a man, Fuller from youth concentrated on cultivating her mental powers and competing with men on purely intellectual terms. The pattern of her life-from prodigy to author to revolutionary-is not only intrinsically interesting but also influenced the lives of those who knew her. Horace Greeley, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and especially Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose usually defensive reserves she tried to break down, were all affected by her during important phases of their lives. Fuller's personality and what happened when she came in conflict with the restraints of the time are of interest to all students of the history of women in America. Her influence on her contemporaries, especially on Emerson in such works of his as "Friendship...