Content Category
Literary Criticism
Abstract/Description
In the 1840s, Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century was dismissed because of the conversational tone with which Fuller wrote. Since then, critics have tied Fuller’s effort at a conversational tone to her desire for her audience to see the purpose of self-culture in completing an individual’s sense of self. However, examining the history behind Fuller’s conversational tone as well as the dialog Fuller embeds in her text shows that conversation is an application of one’s self-culture, as well as a mode to becoming an integral part of society, thus a “unit that is prepared for union.” When all individuals, male and female, are free to use conversation as a means of education and practice, divisions that promote inequality are closed as male and female individuals have an equal opportunity to become a contributing member of society.
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Origin of Submission
as part of a class
Faculty Involvement
Kristine Hansen
Conversation in Woman in the Nineteenth Century: A Tool Used to Prepare Units for Union
In the 1840s, Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century was dismissed because of the conversational tone with which Fuller wrote. Since then, critics have tied Fuller’s effort at a conversational tone to her desire for her audience to see the purpose of self-culture in completing an individual’s sense of self. However, examining the history behind Fuller’s conversational tone as well as the dialog Fuller embeds in her text shows that conversation is an application of one’s self-culture, as well as a mode to becoming an integral part of society, thus a “unit that is prepared for union.” When all individuals, male and female, are free to use conversation as a means of education and practice, divisions that promote inequality are closed as male and female individuals have an equal opportunity to become a contributing member of society.