Margaret Fuller and the great Lawsuit

            The assigned section from Margaret Fuller’s The great Lawsuit: Man Versus Men, Woman versus women One if the reasons I liked Margaret Fuller (besides my affinity toward anything Feminist in nature) was her boldness. The audacity with which she spoke was very moving once, especially considering her time, and also leads me to wonder how much she would have been taken seriously for her time. Would she have been considered radically unhinged by the male population, which led to her being published? Even so, the introduction explains that she was widely read by women, so at least we know that some people gained from her writing. Nonetheless, I have to wonder if the risks she took in writing led to scorn by the ruling males.

            The Great lawsuit starts off very positively for men, granting the redeeming quality that once they actually face some sort of hardship, they are able to understand that women face hardship, possibly even worse than their own. Though her language confused me some, I believe that her second argument (after discussing the changes brought on by the French Revolution) was that although equality is great and all, if there is no justice in general, it hardly seems very rewarding to fight for equality. Basically, I think I can safely sum up the first paragraph to mean that:

1. Men, once suffered a bit, can actually see the greater suffering of women.

2. Once women get a taste of equality, they may (depending on the situation of the society), think that that sucks too.

-Note: I hope that the second part isn’t fully the case because it may lead to the dissuasion of fighting for equal rights.

            Then Fuller starts getting bold and just saying what is what. First, she talks about other ways the ruling people have been oppressive. I wonder now if the notion of the patriarchy was in existence yet. I believe current feminist bell hooks defines patriarchy as the white supremacist capitalistic patriarchy, meaning that the prior-mentioned are the people who define and control culture. But I digress. I was saying earlier that I admire, just as much as her profoundness, Fuller’s boldness. She makes very strong statements. I like how she defines America as being the nation to develop a template for a just society, like how Europe had already been meant to “promote” the mental culture of man. I like that, unlike me, when she uses the statement “all men are created equal” she doesn’t think that the word men is gender specific. I like that she uses and reiterates that statement, explicating that that term means that if “external freedom” is achieved for a nation, it must be everyone in that nation.

            Fuller fights against the fact that men at this time take advantage of their wives. She degrades men in the same manner in which women have often been degraded, except the evidence she points to about men is much more dishonorable than women’s tendency to be “gossipy”. She points out men living off the “industrious earnings” of their wives. She points out men taking their wives’ children away from them after she tries to leave him to bring her back.

            Then again, I like that Fuller is a feminist speaker who represents most women, in that she doesn’t have to be a man-hater to make her arguments. She not only fights fot the dignity of women being represented by society, but for the goodness of men (gender-specific) to be acknowledged by society (mainly women). She says she believes that it is improbable that the only way for women’s rights to be publicly considered is for a woman to be publicly representing these rights. She believes that men are both influenced enough by women and inherently caring enough to consider women’s rights on their own. The issue then, must be an outside influence, which stymies men’s fighting for gender equality.

Emerson: Self-Reliance and The American Scholar

On of the main issues I came across in reading Emerson was that I found contradictory directions in the introductions of Self-Reliance and The American Scholar. In the first paragraph of The American Scholar, Emerson states that:
-“the gods in the beginning divided Man into me, that he might be more helpful to himself.”
-“there is One Man, -present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty.”
He regards this knowledge as a great wisdom, expressing that instead of living in a right state in which the main foundation of men is an one intact unit, we live within a degenerate state in which all of the abilities have been too far divided. As for the position of the scholar, Emerson explains that in an ideally unified state, in which men recognize that all men comprise one Man, the scholar represents the noble action of Man Thinking. He contrasts this model with the degenerate version in which the scholar is merely a “thinker”, or “the parrot of other men’s thinking”.
The deduction for these first few paragraphs of The American Scholar is that it is vital for performance within a society and self-actualization that we consider all men part of a wider entity which is Man.
Self-Reliance not only appeared to contradict this perspective, but also to negate its value. As I read the essay, I anticipated passages prescribing that we work to completely depend on ourselves, especially in regard to physical and material necessities. The following statements confusingly (in my opinion) appear on the first page in relation to what a person feels, believes and thinks:
1. “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men, -that is genius”.
2. “Speak your latent conviction and it shall be the universal sense: for always the inmost becomes the outmost.”
Neither of these statements made a whole lot of sense to me, both in regard to introducing the concepts of self-reliance or in having any individual self-contained meaning. While the rest of the document contains many fantastic pieces of wisdom, I finally realized that Emerson is not discussing the importance of Self-reliance as far as health and security or self-sufficiency within the realm of physical needs. The purpose of Self-Reliance­ is to promote knowing your own mind and being true to that mind. Said self-reliance related to relying on your own mind. In other words, the lesson of Self-reliance borrows from Platonic teachings and from two recognizable quotes:
The ancient Greek proverb “Know thyself” which once accomplished should be followed by the principle of “to thine own self be true.”
Once I reread some of the sections in both texts, I found the connection between what I had misjudged to be adverse works. Self-trust is vital in both. In The American Scholar Emerson states that:
“In self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the scholar be, -free and brave.”
In Self-Reliance he states that man should be weary of conforming and to “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
The American Scholar was written in 1937, while Self-Reliance was written in 1941. Since clarifying the purpose of both, the relationship between the counsel within both works has become clearer as well. My assumption is that while the mastery of self-reliance (in Emerson’s sense) should be observed over an individual’s lifetime, and can take a life’s full journey to achieve, the advice from Self-reliance­ actually precedes the advice of The American Scholar. Ultimately, I believe that trusting one’s self is both the initial and ultimate necessity of one’s life according to Emerson, and that distrust in one’s self impedes a person from ever accomplishing anything.

Washington Irving: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

While reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow I felt inclined myself to wonder what the purpose, for Irving was of this tale. I tried to imagine (quite wrongly I suppose) what the message of the story is. I struggled on the following levels.
First I found myself conflicted because not only does Irving fail to explain the outcome for Ichabod, but he also fills the reader’s brain with options which all have different implications as far as any sort of moral. I contemplated that the point of the story was to point out how easily fear can be instilled in humans. That we never feel completely safe and could easily be convinced that we aren’t alone in the wilderness. I.E. Ichabod believed he was being followed, later chased, after Brom Bones taunts his with his manly, yet frightening tale. This made me wonder then if this is really the tale of the headless horseman or if the monster is just disillusioning human paranoia.
My second issue in finding a lesson was that I found that none of the characters deserved any respect. Ichabod Crane is a voracious, freeloading womanizer. Brom Bones is your basic arrogant tool. Katrina is not so much a character but a means to both men’s rapacious ends. Because of my distaste for each person, I couldn’t root for any, nor could filter out a lesson based on any of the character’s behaviors and respective outcomes in the story.
I finally found some resolve in the postscript.
The final sort of "lesson" derived from the story according to the story-teller of the post script of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow begins with the following:"That there is no situation in life but has it's advantages and pleasures, provided that we will but take a joke as we find it."This means that as long as we have a sense of humor, some pleasure or advantage can be derived from any experience. This appropriately appears to be a joke in itself, considering the fate of the legend’s protagonist. It also serves to show that the story-teller implies that legends, particularly this one, are taken too seriously, both in the credibility assigned to them and in regard to the fact that, being legends, they do not involve the person being entertained by them.
The story-teller continues:
"That, therefore, he that runs races with goblin troopers, is likely to have rough riding of it:" which he concludes with the final portion: "Ergo, for a country schoolmaster to be refused the hand of a Dutch heiress, is a certain step to high preferment in state."I found the second part confusing, wondering again if he is just telling the “cautious old gentleman” and the reader to basically shut up, stop worrying and just enjoy the story. On the other hand, it could just be intended irony that the story-teller is reducing the lesson of Ichabod’s experience to advising school-teachers to date on their own level.
It is amusing, however, despite my confusion, that the story-teller equates the risk and/or imprudence of riding with an ill-tempered phantom with pursuing women out of your league. I think that again that the intention is to be humorous, implying that even after all the stupid, sinful and death-inviting behavior of Ichabod, basically the dumbest thing he could do was try to date Katrina.
This final thought leads me to believe that the glib story-teller might just be Brom Bones.