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Analysis Of Margaret Fuller's Essay: The Great Lawsuit

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Margaret Fuller fights for equality in her essay The Great Lawsuit. She discusses the idea that women are equal in every way to men and deserve the rights that men get just by being born male. Fuller’s argument shares a lot of similarities with Emerson’s idea of self-reliance. She discusses the idea of one universal order, and the notion of leaving the past in the past so as to move forward, although Fuller does share some ideas with Emerson, her essay held a different meaning of self-reliance for women than it did for men.
Margaret Fuller adopts Emerson’s idea of one universal order, and claims that “if the woman apparelled in flesh, to one master only are they accountable. There is but one law for all souls”. (752). She also lists instances of men’s fears of …show more content…

At one point during this discussion she talks about self-reliance, stating, “…because the 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 difficulty is to get them to the point where they shall naturally develop self-respect…” (754). She talks about how hard it was to develop this kind of independent mind set. For women who did not grow up with Fuller’s advantages, it was a very daunting task.
Fuller encouraged women to go against the grain and educate themselves. She told women to disregard society and learn to be an independent person. In these aspects she shows a few of Emerson’s main ideas. Fuller is different in her thought process though, because she is mainly talking to women in her essay. This is the most glaring difference and also shows how little Emerson understood of minorities in America. Emerson was addressing all of America, but in many cases only white-male America. Fuller was more aware of the hard ships for women in

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