An American Jeremiah in Rome: A Study of Margaret Fuller's ... - aisna
An American Jeremiah in Rome: A Study of Margaret Fuller's ... - aisna
An American Jeremiah in Rome: A Study of Margaret Fuller's ... - aisna
- No tags were found...
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
106 RSA Journal 11<br />
means to preserve slavery, to exposures <strong>of</strong> the grow<strong>in</strong>g levels <strong>of</strong><br />
abject poverty <strong>in</strong> develop<strong>in</strong>g urban communities. 9<br />
For Fuller, who had been tra<strong>in</strong>ed by her Harvard-educated<br />
lawyer and congressman father <strong>in</strong> the political and rhetorical<br />
tradition <strong>of</strong> the revolution, 10 the emergence <strong>of</strong> <strong>in</strong>equality <strong>in</strong> America<br />
on the multiple axes <strong>of</strong> gender, race, and class stood <strong>in</strong> sharp<br />
contrast with the egalitarian pr<strong>in</strong>ciples upon which the country had<br />
been founded. It is precisely as a breach <strong>of</strong> democratic promise<br />
that Fuller constantly depicts the corruption <strong>of</strong> republicanism that<br />
accompanied national geographical and economic growth.<br />
Comment<strong>in</strong>g on the news <strong>of</strong> a U.S. victory <strong>in</strong> the struggle with<br />
Mexico over Texas, a conflict caused to a large extent by the<br />
<strong>An</strong>glo-<strong>American</strong> colonists' determ<strong>in</strong>ation to employ slave labor <strong>in</strong><br />
defiance <strong>of</strong> the Mexican government, she writes, "Va<strong>in</strong> have been<br />
the hopes that the victories <strong>of</strong> this country would be over wrong<br />
and ignorance, not mere conquest <strong>of</strong> the bodies <strong>of</strong> other men to<br />
obta<strong>in</strong> their possessions or guard our own." That the "wolves <strong>of</strong><br />
war", as Fuller describes her country's aggressive militarism, should<br />
"rage abroad without the slightest excuse from hunger", was all the<br />
more reprehensible precisely because "all omens marked out [this<br />
country] as the dom<strong>in</strong>ion where the hopes <strong>of</strong> the Pr<strong>in</strong>ce <strong>of</strong> Peace<br />
might be realized" . 11<br />
<strong>Fuller's</strong> condemnation <strong>of</strong> national policies as a failure to<br />
live up to the expectation that a country established upon the<br />
declaration that all men are equal would achieve a most perfect state<br />
<strong>of</strong> democracy is by no means idiosyncratic. On the contrary, it is a<br />
text-book example <strong>of</strong> the rhetorical genre that Sacvan Bercovitch calls<br />
the "<strong>American</strong> jeremiad." First produced among seventeenth-century<br />
Puritans as a form <strong>of</strong> ritualistic compla<strong>in</strong>t because <strong>of</strong> the apparent<br />
failure <strong>of</strong> Puritan society to fulfill its task <strong>of</strong> religious self-perfection<br />
and world redemption, the jeremiad survived the demise <strong>of</strong> Puritan<br />
theocracy to become central to <strong>American</strong> political rhetoric. In the<br />
secular version <strong>of</strong> the jeremiad adopted by Fuller and her<br />
contemporaries, America's mission had been re<strong>in</strong>terpreted as a<br />
political one, namely the realization <strong>of</strong> a model democratic society<br />
and the spread<strong>in</strong>g <strong>of</strong> the bless<strong>in</strong>gs <strong>of</strong> democracy world-wide. 12<br />
While the sphere <strong>of</strong> action <strong>of</strong> the jeremiad shifted from