The Great Lawsuit
Man versus Men. Woman versus Women.
Margaret Fuller
(1843)

Selections by Phyllis Cole and Dorothy May Emerson
Reprinted by kind permission

Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.
—Woman in the Nineteenth Century

This great suit has now been carried on through many ages, with various results. The decisions have been numerous, but always followed by appeals to still higher courts. How can it be otherwise, when the law itself is the subject of frequent elucidation, constant revision? …

Yet a foundation for the largest claim is now established…. Whatever the soul knows how to seek, it must attain. Knock, and it shall be opened; seek, and ye shall find….However disputed by many, however ignorantly used, or falsified, by those who do receive it, the fact of an universal, unceasing revelation, has been too clearly stated in words, to be lost sight of in thought, and sermons preached from the text, "Be ye perfect," are the only sermons of a pervasive and deep-searching influence….

Meanwhile, not a few believe, and men themselves have expressed the opinion, that the time is come when Euridice is to call for an Orpheus, rather than Orpheus for Euridice; that the idea of man, however imperfectly brought out, has been far more so than that of woman, and that an improvement in the daughters will best aid the reformation of the sons of this age.

It is worthy of remark, that, as the principle of liberty is better understood and more nobly interpreted, a broader protest is made in behalf of woman. As men become aware that all men have not had their fair chance, they are inclined to say that no women have had a fair chance. The French revolution, that strangely disguised angel, bore witness in favor of woman, but interpreted her claims no less ignorantly than those of man. Its idea of happiness did not rise beyond outward enjoyment, unobstructed by the tyranny of others. The title it gave was Citoyen, Citoyenne, and it is not unimportant to woman that even this species of equality was awarded her. Before, she could be condemned to perish on the scaffold for treason, but not as a citizen, but a subject. The right, with which this title then invested a human being, was that of bloodshed and license. The Goddess of Liberty was impure. Yet truth was prophesied in the ravings of that hideous fever induced by long ignorance and abuse. Europe is conning a valued lesson from the blood-stained page. The same tendencies, farther unfolded, will bear good fruit in this country….

Though the national independence be blurred by the servility of individuals; though freedom and equality have been proclaimed only to leave room for a monstrous display of slave dealing and slave keeping; though the free American so often feels himself free, like the Roman, only to pamper his appetites and his indolence through the misery of his fellow beings, still it is not in vain, that the verbal statement has been made, "All men are born free and equal." There it stands, a golden certainty, wherewith to encourage the good, to shame the bad. The new world may be called clearly to perceive that it incurs the utmost penalty, if it rejects the sorrowful brother. And if men are deaf, the angels hear….

Of all its banners, none has been more steadily upheld, and under none has more valor and willingness for real sacrifices been shown, than that of the champions of the enslaved African. And this band it is, which, partly in consequence of a natural following out of principles, partly because many women have been prominent in that cause, makes, just now, the warmest appeal in behalf of woman!

Though there has been a growing liberality on this point, yet society at large is not so prepared for the demands of this party, but that they are, and will be for some time, coldly regarded as the Jacobins of their day.

"Is it not enough," cries the sorrowful trader, "that you have done all you could to break up the national Union, and thus destroy the prosperity of our country, but now you must be trying to break up family union, to take my wife away from the cradle, and the kitchen hearth, to vote at polls, and preach from a pulpit! Of course, if she does such things, she cannot attend to those of her own sphere. She is happy enough as she is. She has more leisure than I have, every means of improvement, every indulgence.”

"Have you asked her whether she was satisfied with these indulgences?"

"No, but I know she is. She is too amiable to wish what would make me unhappy, and too judicious to wish to step beyond the sphere of her sex. I will never consent to have our peace disturbed by any such discussions.”

"'Consent'--you! it is not consent from you that is in question, it is assent from your wife."

"Am I not the head of my house?"

"You are not the head of your wife. God has given her a mind of her own."

"I am the head and she the heart."

"God grant you play true to one another then. If the head represses no natural pulse of the heart, there can be no question as to your giving your consent. Both will be of one accord, and there needs but to present any question to get a full and true answer. There is no need of precaution, of indulgence, or consent. But our doubt is whether the heart consents with the head, or only acquiesces in its decree; and it is to ascertain the truth on this point, that we propose some liberating measures."

Thus vaguely are these questions proposed and discussed at present. But their being proposed at all implies much thought, and suggests more. Many women are considering within themselves what they need that they have not, and what they can have, if they find they need it. Many men are considering whether women are capable of being and having more than they are and have, and whether, if they are, it will be best to consent to improvement in their condition….

It is not surprising that it should be the Anti-Slavery party that pleads for woman, when we consider merely that she does not hold property on equal terms with men; so that, if a husband dies without a will, the wife, instead of stepping at once into his place as head of the family, inherits only a part of his fortune, as if she were a child, or ward only, not an equal partner….

And, as to men's representing women fairly, at present, while we hear from men who owe to their wives not only all that is comfortable and graceful, but all that is wise in the arrangement of their lives, the frequent remark, "You cannot reason with a woman," when from those of delicacy, nobleness, and poetic culture, the contemptuous phrase, "Women and children,” and that in no light sally of the hour, but in works intended to give a permanent statement of the best experiences, when not one man in the million, shall I say, no, not in the hundred million, can rise above the view that woman was made for man, when such traits as these are daily forced upon the attention, can we feel that man will always do justice to the interests of woman?…

Under these circumstances, without attaching importance in themselves to the changes demanded by the champions of woman, we hail them as signs of the times. We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to woman as freely as to man. Were this done, and a slight temporary fermentation allowed to subside, we believe that the Divine would ascend into nature to a height unknown in the history of past ages, and nature, thus instructed, would regulate the spheres not only so as to avoid collision, but to bring forth ravishing harmony.

Yet then, and only then, will human beings be ripe for this, when inward and outward freedom for woman, as much as for man, shall be acknowledged as a right, not yielded as a concession. As the friend of the negro assumes that one man cannot, by right, hold another in bondage, should the friend of woman assume that man cannot, by right, lay even well-meant restrictions on woman. If the negro be a soul, if the woman be a soul, apparelled in flesh, to one master only are they accountable. There is but one law for all souls, and, if there is to be an interpreter of it, he comes not as man, or son of man, but as Son of God….

I was talking on this subject with Miranda, a woman, who, if any in the world, might speak without heat or bitterness of the position of her sex.… [S]he smilingly replied, And yet we must admit that I have been fortunate, and this should not be. My good father's early trust gave the first bias, and the rest followed of course…. [PC1] [T]he position I early was enabled to take, was one of self-reliance. And were all women as sure of their wants as I was, the result would be the same….

The severe nation which taught that the happiness of the race was forfeited through the fault of a woman, and showed its thought of what sort of regard man owed her, by making him accuse her on the first question to his God, who gave her to the patriarch as a handmaid, and, by the Mosaical law, bound her to allegiance like a serf, even they greeted, with solemn rapture, all great and holy women as heroines, prophetesses, nay judges in Israel; and, if they made Eve listen to the serpent, gave Mary to the Holy Spirit. In other nations it has been the same down to our day….

Whatever may have been the domestic manners of the ancient nations, the idea of woman was nobly manifested in their mythologies and poems, where she appeared as Sita in the Ramayana, a form of tender purity, in the Egyptian Isis, of divine wisdom never yet surpassed. In Egypt, too, the Sphynx, walking the earth with lion tread, looked out upon its marvels in the calm, inscrutable beauty of a virgin's face, and the Greek could only add wings to the great emblem. In Greece, Ceres and Proserpine, termed "the goddesses," were seen seated, side by side. They needed not to rise for any worshipper or any change; they were prepared for all things, as those initiated to their mysteries knew. More obvious is the meaning of those three forms, the Diana, Minerva, and Vesta. Unlike in the expression of their beauty, but alike in this,--that each was self-sufficing….

Women who speak in public, if they have a moral power, such as has been felt from Angelina Grimke and Abby Kelly, that is, if they speak for conscience' sake, to serve a cause which they hold sacred, invariably subdue the prejudices of their hearers, and excite an interest proportionate to the aversion with which it had been the purpose to regard them….

The late Dr. Channing, whose enlarged and tender and religious nature shared every onward impulse of his time, though his thoughts followed his wishes with a deliberative caution, which belonged to his habits and temperament, was greatly interested in these expectations for women. His own treatment of them was absolutely and thoroughly religious. He regarded them as souls, each of which had a destiny of its own, incalculable to other minds, and whose leading it must follow, guided by the light of a private conscience. He had sentiment, delicacy, kindness, taste, but they were all pervaded and ruled by this one thought, that all beings had souls, and must vindicate their own inheritance. Thus all beings were treated by him with an equal, and sweet, though solemn courtesy. The young and unknown, the woman and the child, all felt themselves regarded with an infinite expectation, from which there was no reaction to vulgar prejudice. He demanded of all he met, to use his favorite phrase, "great truths"….

At one time when the progress of Harriet Martineau through this country, Angelina Grimke's appearance in public, and the visit of Mrs. Jameson had turned his thoughts to this subject, he expressed high hopes as to what the coming era would bring to woman….He seemed to think that he might sometime write upon the subject. That his aid is withdrawn from the cause is a subject of great regret, for on this question, as on others, he would have known how to sum up the evidence and take, in the noblest spirit, middle ground. He always furnished a platform on which opposing parties could stand, and look at one another under the influence of his mildness and enlightened candor….

For woman, if by a sympathy as to outward condition, she is led to aid the enfranchisement of the slave, must no less so, by inward tendency, to favor measures which promise to bring the world more thoroughly and deeply into harmony with her nature. When the lamb takes place of the lion as the emblem of nations, both women and men will be as children of one spirit, perpetual learners of the word and doers thereof, not hearers only….

There are two aspects of woman's nature, expressed by the ancients as Muse and Minerva. …The especial genius of woman I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency. She is great not so easily in classification, or re-creation, as in an instinctive seizure of causes, and a simple breathing out of what she receives that has the singleness of life, rather than the selecting or energizing of art….

Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman….

If it has been the tendency of the past remarks to call woman rather to the Minerva side,--if I, unlike the more generous writer, have spoken from society no less than the soul,--let it be pardoned. It is love that has caused this, love for many incarcerated souls, that might be freed could the idea of religious self-dependence be established in them could the weakening habit of dependence on others be broken up….

If any individual live too much in relations, so that he becomes a stranger to the resources of his own nature, he falls after a while into a distraction, or imbecility, from which he can only be cured by a time of isolation, which gives the renovating fountains time to rise up….It is therefore that while any elevation, in the view of union, is to be hailed with joy, we shall not decline celibacy as the great fact of the time.…Union is only possible to those who are units. To be fit for relations in time, souls, whether of man or woman, must be able to do without them in the spirit.

It is therefore that I would have woman lay aside all thought, such as she habitually cherishes, of being taught and led by men. I would have her, like the Indian girl, dedicate herself to the Sun, the Sun of Truth, and go nowhere if his beams did not make clear the path. I would have her free from compromise, from complaisance, from helplessness, because I would have her good enough and strong enough to love one and all beings, from the fulness, not the poverty of being….

A profound thinker has said "no married woman can represent the female world, for she belongs to her husband. The idea of woman must be represented by a virgin."

But that is the very fault of marriage, and of the present relation between the sexes, that the woman does belong to the man, instead of forming a whole with him. Were it otherwise there would be no such limitation to the thought.

Woman, self-centred, would never be absorbed by any relation; it would be only an experience to her as to man. It is a vulgar error that love, a love to woman is her whole existence; she also is born for Truth and Love in their universal energy. Would she but assume her inheritance, Mary would not be the only Virgin Mother….

And will not she soon appear? The woman who shall vindicate their birthright for all women; who shall teach them what to claim, and how to use what they obtain? Shall not her name be for her era Victoria, for her country and her life Virginia? Yet predictions are rash; she herself must teach us to give her the fitting name.

The Sacred Marriage
from Woman in the Nineteenth Century
(1845)

And has another’s life as large a scope?
It may give due fulfilment to thy hope,
And every portal to the unknown may ope.

If, near this other life, thy inmost feeling
Trembles with fateful prescience of revealing
The future Deity, time is still concealing.

If thou feel thy whole force drawn more and more
To launch that other bark on seas without a shore;
And no still secret must be kept in store;

If meannesses that dim each temporal deed,
The dull decay that mars the fleshly weed,
And flower of love that seems to fall and leave no-seed—

Hide never the full presence from thy sight
Of mutual aims and tasks, ideals bright,
Which feed their roots to-day on all this seeming blight.

Twin stars that mutual circle in the heaven,
Two parts for spiritual concord given,
Twin Sabbaths that inlock the Sacred Seven;

Still looking to the centre for the cause,
Mutual light giving to draw out the powers,
And learning all the other groups by cognizance of one another’s laws:

The parent love the wedded love includes,
The one permits the two their mutual moods,
The two each other know mid myriad multitudes;

With child-like intellect discerning love,
And mutual action energizing love,
In myriad forms affiliating love.

A world whose seasons bloom from pole to pole,
A force which knows both starting-point and goal,
A Home in Heaven,—the Union in the Soul.

“A Credo”
Composed as a Letter to a Friend in 1842

There is a spirit uncontainable and uncontained.—Within it all manifestation is contained whether of good (accomplishment) or evil (obstruction). To itself its depths are unknown. By living it seeks to know itself, thus evolving plants, animals, men, suns, stars, angels, and, it is to be presumed, an infinity of forms not yet in the horizon of this being who now writes.

Its modes of operation are twofold. First, as genius inspires genius, love love, angel-mother brings forth angelchild. This is the uninterrupted generation, or publication, of spirit taking upon itself congenial forms. Second, conquering obstruction, finding the like in the unlike. This is a secondary generation, a new dynasty, as virtue for simplicity, faith for oneness, charity for pure love.

Then begins the genesis of man, as through his consciousness he attests the laws which regulated the divine genesis The Father is justified in the Son.

The mind of man asks ‘Why was this second development?—Why seeks the divine to exchange best for better, bliss for hope, domesticity for knowledge?’ We reject the plan in the universe which the Spirit permitted as the condition of conscious life. We reject it in the childhood of the soul’s life. The cry of infancy is why should we seek God when He is always there, why seek what is ours as soul’s through indefinite pilgrimages, and burdensome cultures.

The intellect has no answer to this question, yet as we through faith and purity of deed enter into the nature of the Divine it is answered from our own experience. We understand, though we cannot explain the mystery of something gained where all already is.

God, we say, is Love. If we believe this we must trust Him. Whatever has been permitted by the law of being must be for good and only in time not good. We do trust Him and are led forward by experience. Sight gives experience of outward life, faith of inward. We then discern however faintly the necessary harmony of the two lives. The moment we have broken through an obstruction not accidentally, but by the aid of faith, we begin to realize why any was permitted. We begin to interpret the universe and deeper depths are opened with each soul that is convinced. For it would seem that the Divine expressed His meaning to Himself more distinctly in man than in the other forms of our sphere, and through him uttered distinctly the Hallelujah which the other forms of nature only intimate.

Wherever man remains imbedded in nature, whether from sensuality or because he is not yet awakened to consciousness, the purpose of the whole remains unfulfilled, hence our displeasure when man is not in a sense above nature. Yet when he is not bound so closely with all other manifestations, as duly to express their spirit, we are also displeased. He must be at once the highest form of nature and conscious of the meaning she has been striving successively to unfold through those below him.

Centuries pass,—whole races of men are expended in the effort to produce one that shall realize this idea and publish spirit in the human form. But here and there there is a degree of success. Life enough is lived through a man to justify the great difficulties and obstructions attendant on the existence of mankind. 

Then, through all the realms of thought vibrates the affirmation ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,’ and many souls encouraged and instructed offer themselves to the baptism whether of water, whether of fire.

I do not mean to lay an undue stress upon the position and office of man, merely because I am of his race and understand best the scope of his destiny. The history of the earth, the motions of the heavenly bodies suggest already modes of being higher than his and which fulfill more deeply this office of interpretation. But I do suppose his life to be the rivet in one series of links in the great chain, and that all these higher existences are analogous to his. Music suggests them, and when carried on these strong wings through realms which on the ground we discern but dimly, we foresee how the next step in the soul’s upward course shall interpret man to the universe as he now interprets those forms beneath himself; for there is ever evolving a consciousness of consciousness, and a soul of the soul. To know is to bring to light somewhat yet to be known. And as we elucidate the previous workings of spirit, we ourselves become a new material for its development.

Man is himself one tree in the garden of the spirit. From his trunk grow many branches, social contracts, art, literature, religion, etc. The trunk gives the history of the human race. It has grown up higher into the heavens, but its several acorns, though each expressed the all, did not ripen beyond certain contours and a certain size.

In the history of matter, however, laws have been more and more clearly discerned and so in the history of spirit many features of the God-man have put forth; several limbs, disengaged themselves. One is what men call revelation, different from other kinds only in being made through the acts and words of men. Its law is identical whether displaying itself as genius or piety, but its modes of expression are distinct dialects though of similar structure.

The way it is done is this. As the Oak desires to plant its acorns so do souls become the fathers of souls. Some do this through the body, others through the intellect. The first class are citizens; the second artists, philosophers, lawgivers, poets, saints. All these are anointed, all Immanuel, all Messiah, so far as they are true to the law of their incorruptible existence; brutes and devils so far as they are subjected to that of their corruptible existence. 

But yet further, as wherever there is a tendency, a form is gradually evolved as its type; as the rose represents the flower world and is its queen, as the lion and eagle compress within themselves the noblest that is expressed in the animal kingdom, as the telescope and microscope express the high and searching desires of man; and the organ [of the heart a symbol of] his completeness, so has each tribe of thoughts and lives its law upon it to produce a king, a form which shall stand before it a visible representation of the aim of its strivings. It gave laws with Confucius and Moses, it tried them with Brahma, it lived its life of eloquence in the Apollo, it wandered with Osiris. It lived one life as Plato, another as Michael Angelo, or Luther. It has made Gods, it has developed men. Seeking, making it produce ideals of the developments of which humanity is capable, and one of the highest, nay in some respects the very highest it has yet known was the life of Jesus of Nazareth. 

I suppose few are so much believers in his history as myself. I believe (in my own way) in the long preparation of ages and the truth of the prophecy. I see a necessity in the character of Jesus why Abraham should be the founder of his nation, Moses its lawgiver, and David its king and poet. I believe in the genesis as given in the Old Testament. I believe in the prophets, and that they foreknew not only what their nation required, but what the development of universal man required, a Redeemer, an Atoner, one to make at the due crisis, voluntarily the sacrifice Abraham would have made of the child of his old age, a lamb of God, taking away the sins of the world. I believe Jesus came when the time was ripe, that he was peculiarly a messenger and son of God. I have nothing to say in denial of the story of his birth. Whatever the true circumstances were, in time he was born of a virgin, and the tale expresses a truth of the soul. I have no objection to the miracles except where they do not happen to please me. Why should not a soul so consecrate and intent develop new laws and make matter plastic I can imagine him walking the waves and raising the dead without any violation of my usual habits of thought. He would not remain in the tomb, they say surely not; death is impossible to such a being. He remained upon earth and all who have met him since on the way have felt their souls burn within them. He ascended to Heaven, surely, it could not be otherwise. 

But when I say to you, also, that though I think all this really happened, it is of no consequence to me whether it did or not, that the ideal truth such illustrations present to me, is enough, and that if the mind of St. John, for instance, had conceived the whole and offered it to us as a poem, to me, as far as I know, it would be just as real. You see how wide the gulf that separates me from the Christian Church.

Yet you also see that I believe in the history of the Jewish nation and its denouement in Christ, as presenting one great type of spiritual existence. It is very dear to me and occupies a large portion of my thoughts. I have no trouble, so far from the sacrifice required of Abraham, for instance, striking me as it does Mr Parker, I accept it as prefiguring a thought to be fully expressed by the death of Christ (yet forget not that they who passed their children through the fire to Moloch were pious also and not more superstitious than an exclusive devotion to Christ has made many of his followers). Do you not place Christ then in a higher place than Socrates, for instance, or Michael Angelo? Yes! Because if his life not truer, it was deeper, and he is a representative of ages. But then I consider the Greek Apollo as one also! 

Have men erred in following Christ as a leader? Perhaps rarely. So great a soul must make its mark for many centuries. Yet only when men are freed from him and interpret him by the freedom of their own souls open to visits of the Great Spirit from every side can be known as he is.

‘With your view, do you not think He placed undue emphasis on his own position?”

In expression he did so, but this is not in my way either, I should like to treat of this separately in another letter. 

Where he was human, not humanly divine, and where men so received him there was failure, and is mist and sect,—but never where he brought them to the Father. But they knew not what they did with him then and do not now. 

For myself, I believe in Christ because I can do without him; because the truth he announces I see elsewhere intimated, because it is foreshadowed in the very nature of my own being. But I do not wish to do without him. He is constantly aiding and answering me. Only I will not lay any undue and exclusive emphasis on him. When he comes to me, I will receive him; when I feel inclined to go by myself, I will. I do not reject the church either. Let men who can with sincerity live in it. I would not—for I believe far more widely than any body of men I know. And as nowhere I worship less than in the places set apart for that purpose, I will not seem to do so. The blue sky seen above the opposite roof preaches better than any brother, because at present, a freer, simpler medium of religion. When great souls arise again that dare to be entirely free, yet are humble, gentle, and patient, I will listen, if they wish to speak. But that time is not nigh; these I see around me here, and in Europe, are mostly weak and young. 

Would I could myself say with some depth what I feel as to religion in my very soul. It would be a clear note of calm security. But for the present I think you will see how it is with me as to Christ. 

I am grateful here, as everywhere, where spirit bears fruit in fulness. It attests the justice of my desires; it kindles my faith; it rebukes my sloth; it enlightens my resolve. But so does the Apollo, and the beautiful infant, and the summer’s earliest rose. It is only one modification of the same harmony. Jesus breaks through the soil of the world’s life like some great river through the else inaccessible plains and valleys. I bless its course. I follow it. But it is a part of the All. There is nothing peculiar about it but its form. 

I will not loathe sects, persuasions, systems, though I cannot abide in them one moment. I see most men are still in need of them. To them their banners, their tents, let them be Platonists; Fire-worshippers; Christians; let them live in the shadow of the past revelations. But Oh Father of our souls, I seek thee. I seek thee in these forms and in proportion as they reveal thee more, they lead me beyond themselves. I would learn from them all looking to thee. I set no limits from the past to my soul or any soul Countless ages may not produce another worthy to loose the shoes of Jesus of Nazareth; yet there will surely come another manifestation of that Word that was in the beginning. For it is not dead, but sleepeth, and if it lives, must declare itself. 

All future manifestations will come like this,—not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfill. But as an Abraham called for a Moses, a Moses for a David, so does Christ for another ideal. We want a life more complete and various than that of Christ. We have had the Messiah to reconcile and teach, let us have another to live out all the symbolical forms of human life with the calm beauty and physical fulness of a Greek god, with the deep consciousness of a Moses, with the holy love and purity of Jesus. Amen. 

Addenda

I have not shown with any distinctness how the very greatness of the manifestation in Jesus calls for a greater. But this as the extreme emphasis given by himself to his office, should be treated of separately in a letter or essay on the processes of genius in declaring itself. 

I have not shown my deep feeling of his life as a genuine growth, so that his words are all living and they come exactly to memory with all the tone and gesture of the moment, true runes of a divine oracle. It is the same with Shakespeare, and in a less degree, with Dante. I have not spoken of men clinging to him from the same weakness that makes them so dependent on a priesthood, or makes idols of the objects of affection. In him, hearts seek the Friend, minds the Guide. But this is weakness, in religion as elsewhere. No prop will do. ‘The soul must do its own immortal work,’ and books, lovers, friends, meditations fly from us only to return when we can do without them. But when we can use and learn from them, yet feel able to do without them, they will depart no more. If I were to preach on this subject, I would take for a text the words of Jesus: ‘Nevertheless I tell you the truth It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not, the Comforter will not come unto you, but if I depart I will send him unto you.’

from: Frederick Augustus Braun, Margaret Fuller and Goethe, 1910