The Transcendental Period

Woman of Enlightment: Sarah Margaret Fuller
Most people have learned of the Transcendental period through their time spent in American Literature in High School, but it was more than a period for literature, it was also a period of philosophy. The Transcendental period took place in the nineteenth century that taught abstract and Spiritual matters were more real than what was seen by the natural eye. It was based off of Romanticism in Europe during the eighteenth century and Plato’s idealism. Transcendentalists believed that one could find enlightment in themselves and not just in the church. They were skeptical of organized religion and criticized society’s will to conform. Transcendentalists also believed in becoming one with nature and
His speeches also later inspired Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. Amos Bronson Alcott, the founder of the Concord School of Philosophy and the father of writer, Louisa Alcott who wrote Little Women. Frederic Henry Hedge, the founder of the Transcendentalist Club. Ralph Emerson was known as the father of the philosophical movement. He was also the writer of Self-Reliance which was an essay that taught the reader to trust themselves. Lastly, there was Sarah Margaret Fuller. Through research on what philosopher to write about, there were more results for male philosophers than female. It took an extensive and specific search to find women theorists. One person who stood out was Sarah Margaret Fuller. A person new to philosophy may not know of her, but she was one of the most influential women of the nineteenth
Some of these people consisted of Thoreau, Emerson, Bronson Alcott and W. H Channing. They were impressed by her and Thomas Carlyle described her as having a “predetermination to eat this big universe as her oyster or egg,” meaning she had a drive to know everything she can about the world.(Capper 10) Philosopher of transcendentalism and individualism, Ralph Waldo Wilson even acquired her as a student.
It was through her precociousness; she found it hard to relate to other young woman. Some would have described her as arrogant. Transcendentalists believed that social reform started with the need to understand the human condition and bring them up to the highest order of nature, but Fuller struggled with this concept. She wrote to Emerson that she couldn’t see the divinity in herself, yet she was more divine than anyone else around her. Some would say she was just being egotistic, but maybe she felt this way because she wasn’t up to her personal level of