Margaret Fuller

About this artwork

Margaret Fuller’s landmark text, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), critically examined the role of women in society. It argued that marriage should be an equal partnership, insisting that women be given the same property rights as men. Fuller’s progressive ideas countered nineteenth-century common law, which allowed men to control married women’s legal status, earnings, and property. She acknowledged women’s great capabilities when she urged, “Let them be sea-captains if you will.” The fir...