Margaret Fuller in Her Seminal

Margaret Fuller

In her seminal work Women in the Nineteenth Century, women's rights activist Margaret Fuller discussed the current conditions of women in the 19th century American society. She described the inequality between men and women in the context of human rights, wherein men could say that "few men have had a fair chance" to experience liberty, while "no women have had a fair chance" to experience the liberty that is the foundation of American freedom and democracy. During her time, Fuller is considered a radical because she does not only speak rhetoric about human rights and gender equality; she speaks about these concepts in specific terms. As with most women's rights activists during her time were advocating, Fuller was pushing for women's right to suffrage. This advocacy and movement is considered very radical during Fuller's time because American society was just experiencing a change in the status quo with the recent legislative propositions to give African-American citizens the right to vote. Thus, another advocacy for the right to suffrage, this time from the women's rights movement, was another social event that put into question the foundations of American principles of liberty and equality. Legislative action through a proposal and eventual passage of women's right to suffrage is a major institutional and legal change that shocked and at the same time threatened the social fabric of 19th American society.

2. Fuller, in arguing her point for women's rights, expressed her arguments and ideas in the context of the recent move to give the right to suffrage among African-Americans. In Women in the Nineteenth Century, Fuller described how women are no different as the African-American slaves in 19th century American society. While not subjected to slavery, society's imposition of limitations and restrictions to women are considered a different kind of "enslavement," as equal in degree of inequality and inhumanity as enslavement of African-Americans. These limitations and restrictions imposed on women cripple not just the basic human rights of women, but also their liberty to experience and practice independent thinking and develop her intellect and potential in equal measure as men. Men were afraid to give equal rights to women because it would destabilize the status quo of the society, wherein men are considered the "head of the house," and women, subservient and dependent on the head of the house and consequently, considered as the "heart of the house" who keeps the family together while the men goes out to earn a living. Women's rights sought to destabilize the status quo, which puts women in charge of a family's domestic affairs and inside the house, while men are taught to think of more significant things outside of the home and deal with non-domestic affairs. Thus, women's rights and their claim to right to suffrage threatened the moral and social fabric of American society during this time.