Abstract
To the Transcendentalists, "self-culture" was based on the data that each individual had the potential for perfection. Ralph Waldo Emerson's early commitment to Kantian idealism caused him to assert reality as largely created by an individual through the innate structure of thought; the individual's primary concern, therefore, is in the investigation of that structure. Both Margaret Fuller and Emily Dickinson were educated to practice self-cultivation and were influenced by Emerson's idealism. Viewing self-cultivation as a way of improving society, Fuller blended idealism with her own brand of materialism. To her, self-cultivation was useless without vocational opportunities for women, and she advocated "radical dualism", an androgynous vision that would incorporate both masculine and feminine qualities within each individual. Using the process of self-cultivation to develop her art, Emily Dickinson also merged idealism with materialism, but her syncretism involved a notion that the creation of mood in her poetry was a method by which one might comprehend reality. Both women thus departed from an idealistic perspective by using the results of their feminine experience of the world to advocate what was to their minds a way of tying the apprehension of reality more firmly to human experience. Corresponding to their world views is the concept of language that each of these writers developed. For Emerson, language unambiguously captures reality and can describe the rationality of the ideal domain. Fuller, agreeing with Emerson that the denotative function of language serves the practical ends of persuasion, nonetheless incorporated her varied experiences into her concept of language and adopted a correspondence view of language that is manifested in her social criticism. For Dickinson, however, language is a metaphor for reality. Because human moods are often ineffable, language is therefore suggestive rather than descriptive. Thus Fuller's and Dickinson's differing concepts of language reflect the same metaphysical assumptions that characterize their departure from the Emersonian concept of self-cultivation.
Smith, Susan Margaret Belasco (1987). The extension of self-culture, Margaret Fuller and Emily Dickinson. Texas A&M University. Texas A&M University. Libraries. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /DISSERTATIONS -26866.