Summary
Read a summary, excerpt and download Life Without and Life Within by Margaret Fuller Ossoli for iPhone, iPad, Nook, Android, and Kindle in PDF and all popular eBook reader formats (AZW3, EPUB, MOBI).
"Life Without and Life Within" is an essay written by Margaret Fuller Ossoli and explores the contrasting experiences of women in the 19th century, particularly in the context of their domestic lives.
Fuller argues that many women of her time were leading unfulfilling lives, trapped within the confines of their domestic roles, with little opportunity for personal growth or intellectual development. She emphasizes the need for women to have access to education and the opportunity to pursue their own ambitions and interests.
At the same time, Fuller acknowledges the importance of the domestic sphere and the role of women as caregivers and nurturers. She suggests that women's influence and contributions are not limited to the public sphere but extend into the private realm, where they play a vital role in shaping the character and values of their families.
In "Life Without and Life Within," Fuller calls for a more balanced and equitable society, where women have the opportunity to explore their intellectual potential and contribute to public life while also fulfilling their roles within the family. The essay addresses issues of gender, education, and the limited options available to women during Fuller's time, making it an important piece in the early feminist literature of the United States.
Excerpt
PART I.
REVIEWS.
MENZEL'S VIEW OF GŒTHE.
MENZEL'S view of Gœthe is that of a Philistine, in the least opprobrious sense of the term. It is one which has long been applied in Germany to petty cavillers and incompetent critics. I do not wish to convey a sense so disrespectful in speaking of Menzel. He has a vigorous and brilliant mind, and a wide, though imperfect, culture. He is a man of talent, but talent cannot comprehend genius. He judges of Gœthe as a Philistine, inasmuch as he does not enter into Canaan, and read the prophet by the light of his own law, but looks at him from without, and tries him by a rule beneath which he never lived. That there was something Menzel saw; what that something was not he saw, but what it was he could not see; none could see; it was something to be felt and known at the time of its apparition, but the clear sight of it was reserved to a day far enough removed from its sphere to get a commanding point of view. Has that day come? A little while ago it seemed so; certain features of Gœthe's personality, certain results of his tendency, had become so manifest. But as the plants he planted mature, they shed a new seed for a yet more noble growth. A wider experience, a deeper insight, make rejected words come true, and bring a more refined perception of meaning already discerned. Like all his elder brothers of the elect band, the forlorn hope of humanity, he obliges us to live and grow, that we may walk by his side; vainly we strive to leave him behind in some niche of the hall of our ancestors; a few steps onward and we find him again, of yet serener eye and more towering mien than on his other pedestal. Former measurements of his size have, like the girdle bound by the nymphs round the infant Apollo, only served to make him outgrow the unworthy compass. The still rising sun, with its broader light, shows us it is not yet noon. In him is soon perceived a prophet of our own age, as well as a representative of his own; and we doubt whether the revolutions of the century be not required to interpret the quiet depths of his Saga.
Sure it is that none has yet found Gœthe's place, as sure that none can claim to be his peer, who has not some time, ay, and for a long time, been his pupil!
Yet much truth has been spoken of him in detail, some by Menzel, but in so superficial a spirit, and with so narrow a view of its bearings, as to have all the effect of falsehood. Such denials of the crown can only fix it more firmly on the head of the "Old Heathen." To such the best answer may be given in the words of Bettina Brentan: "The others criticise thy works; I only know that they lead us on and on till we live in them." And thus will all criticism end in making more men and women read these works, and "on and on," till they forget whether the author be a patriot or a moralist, in the deep humanity of the thought, the breathing nature of the scene. While words they have accepted with immediate approval fade from memory, these oft-denied words of keen, cold truth return with ever new force and significance.
Men should be true, wise, beautiful, pure, and aspiring. This man was true and wise, capable of all things. Because he did not in one short life complete his circle, can we afford to lose him out of sight? Can we, in a world where so few men have in any degree redeemed their inheritance, neglect a nature so rich and so manifestly progressive?
Historically considered, Gœthe needs no apology. His so-called faults fitted him all the better for the part he had to play. In cool possession of his wide-ranging genius, he taught the imagination of Germany, that the highest flight should be associated with the steady sweep and undazzled eye of the eagle. Was he too much the connoisseur, did he attach too great an importance to the cultivation of taste, where just then German literature so much needed to be refined, polished, and harmonized? Was he too sceptical, too much an experimentalist,—how else could he have formed himself to be the keenest, and, at the same time, most nearly universal of observers, teaching theologians, philosophers, and patriots that nature comprehends them all, commands them all, and that no one development of life must exclude the rest? Do you talk, in the easy cant of the day, of German obscurity, extravagance, pedantry, and bad taste,—and will you blame this man, whose Greek, English, Italian, German mind steered so clear of these rocks and shoals, clearing, adjusting, and calming on each side, wherever he turned his prow? Was he not just enough of an idealist, just enough of a realist, for his peculiar task? If you want a moral enthusiast, is not there Schiller? If piety, of purest, mystic sweetness, who but Novalis? Exuberant sentiment, that treasures each withered leaf in a tender breast, look to your Richter. Would you have men to find plausible meaning for the deepest enigma, or to hang up each map of literature, well painted and dotted on its proper roller,—there are the Schlegels. Men of ideas were numerous as migratory crows in autumn, and Jacobi wrote the heart into philosophy, as well as he could. Who could fill Gœthe's place to Germany, and to the world, of which she is now the teacher? His much-reviled aristocratic turn was at that time a reconciling element. It is plain why he was what he was, for his country and his age.
Whoever looks into the history of his youth, will be struck by a peculiar force with which all things worked together to prepare him for his office of artist-critic to the then chaotic world of thought in his country. What an unusually varied scene of childhood and of youth! What endless change and contrast of circumstances and influences! Father and mother, life and literature, world and nature,—playing into one another's hands, always by antagonism! Never was a child so carefully guarded by fate against prejudice, against undue bias, against any engrossing sentiment. Nature having given him power of poetical sympathy to know every situation, would not permit him to make himself at home in any. And how early what was most peculiar in his character manifested itself, may be seen in these anecdotes related by his mother to Bettina.
Of Gœthe's childhood.—"He was not willing to play with other little children, unless they were very fair. In a circle he began suddenly to weep, screaming, 'Take away the black, ugly child; I cannot bear to have it here.' He could not be pacified; they were obliged to take him home, and there the mother could hardly console him for the child's ugliness. He was then only three years old."
"His mother was surprised, that when his brother Jacob died, who had been his playmate, he shed no tear, but rather seemed annoyed by the lamentations of those around him. But afterwards, when his mother asked whether he had not loved his brother, he ran into his room and brought from under his bed a bundle of papers, all written over, and said he had done all this for Jacob."
Even so in later years, had he been asked if he had not loved his country and his fellow-men, he would not have answered by tears and vows, but pointed to his works.
In the first anecdote is observable that love of symmetry in external relations which, in manhood, made him give up the woman he loved, because she would not have been in place among the old-fashioned furniture of his father's house; and dictated the course which, at the crisis of his life, led him to choose an outward peace rather than an inward joy. In the second, he displays, at the earliest age, a sense of his vocation as a recorder, the same which drew him afterwards to write his life into verse, rather than clothe it in action. His indirectness, his aversion to the frankness of heroic meetings, is repulsive and suspicious to generous and flowing natures; yet many of the more delicate products of the mind seem to need these sheaths, lest bird and insect rifle them in the bud.
And if this subtlety, isolation, and distance be the dictate of nature, we submit, even as we are not vexed that the wild bee should hide its honey in some old moss-grown tree, rather than in the glass hives of our gardens. We believe it will repay the pains we take in seeking for it, by some peculiar flavor from unknown flowers. Was Gœthe the wild bee? We see that even in his boyhood he showed himself a very Egyptian, in his love for disguises; forever expressing his thought in roundabout ways, which seem idle mummery to a mind of Spartan or Roman mould. Had he some simple thing to tell his friend, he read it from the newspaper, or wrote it into a parable. Did he make a visit, he put on the hat or wig of some other man, and made his bow as Schmidt or Schlosser, that they might stare, when he spoke as Gœthe. He gives as the highest instance of passionate grief, that he gave up for one day watching the tedious ceremonies of the imperial coronation. In daily life many of these carefully recorded passages have an air of platitude, at which no wonder the Edinburgh Review laughed. Yet, on examination, they are full of meaning. And when we see the same propensity writing itself into Ganymede, Mahomet's song, the Bayadere, and Faust, telling all Gœthe's religion in Mignon and Makana, all his wisdom in the Western-Eastern Divan, we respect it, accept, all but love it.
This theme is for a volume, and I must quit it now. A brief summary of what Gœthe was suffices to vindicate his existence, as an agent in history and a part of nature, but will not meet the objections of those who measure him, as they have a right to do, by the standard of ideal manhood.
Most men, in judging another man, ask, Did he live up to our standard?
But to me it seems desirable to ask rather, Did he live up to his own?
So possible is it that our consciences may be more enlightened than that of the Gentile under consideration. And if we can find out how much was given him, we are told, in a pure evangelium, to judge thereby how much shall be required.
Now, Gœthe has given us both his own standard and the way to apply it. "To appreciate any man, learn first what object he proposed to himself; next, what degree of earnestness he showed with regard to attaining that object."