This paper seeks to uncover relationships between Margaret Fuller’s passages on prostitution that she lately attached to Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) and her personal experience linked with this social phenomenon prior to the publication of the book. A large number of critics constantly describe a connection between Margaret’s ideas on advancement opportunities for women's education with her background as a schoolteacher, but almost none of them focus on the significance of her visit to imprison women in Sing-Sing Prison. While living at Fishkill Landing and working on the revision of her past work “The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men. Woman versus Women”(1843), Fuller also was in close relations with her neighbors. One of them was her old friend from the
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When in February 1845 Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century became available on the bookshelves to the wide audience, only several of her female readers were ready in their minds to adopt her decisive position. Fuller claims, that they (wealthy women) have to “seek out these degraded women [prostitutes], give them tender sympathy, counsel, employment. Take the place of mothers, such as might have saved them originally.” However, despite this “unpreparedness” of some women to acknowledge their responsibilities for the fallen ones, the passages on prostitution fit to the content of the “Woman in Nineteenth Century” perfectly. In the beginning of the 19th century, there were only three ways for working class woman to be able to pay for her needs. It was a marriage, millwork, or prostitution. The last one wide spreads that much, that, for example, in NY in the middle of the century it was one female prostitute to 64 males. Under those circumstances, in 1834 the NY Female Moral Reform Society was founded. So, the importance of prostitution chronologically holds true value in relation to Fuller’s
When in February 1845 Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century became available on the bookshelves to the wide audience, only several of her female readers were ready in their minds to adopt her decisive position. Fuller claims, that they (wealthy women) have to “seek out these degraded women [prostitutes], give them tender sympathy, counsel, employment. Take the place of mothers, such as might have saved them originally.” However, despite this “unpreparedness” of some women to acknowledge their responsibilities for the fallen ones, the passages on prostitution fit to the content of the “Woman in Nineteenth Century” perfectly. In the beginning of the 19th century, there were only three ways for working class woman to be able to pay for her needs. It was a marriage, millwork, or prostitution. The last one wide spreads that much, that, for example, in NY in the middle of the century it was one female prostitute to 64 males. Under those circumstances, in 1834 the NY Female Moral Reform Society was founded. So, the importance of prostitution chronologically holds true value in relation to Fuller’s