Margaret Fuller: Summer on the Lakes, in 1843

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

In the spring of 1843 Fuller accepted an offer from her friends James Freeman Clarke and Sarah Clarke to accompany them on a trip through the Great Lakes region. After visiting Niagara Falls and traveling across Lake Michigan to Chicago, Fuller and Sarah Clarke embarked on an extended journey across the Illinois prairie. Although the roads were poor and the accommodations rough, Fuller found inspiration in the open expanses of the countryside. She was also impressed by the efforts of American and European pioneers to begin new lives in scattered settlements. As she traveled, Fuller spoke to people she encountered, kept a journal, and wrote letters to friends back home. Upon her return to Cambridge she gathered further information about North America's western region at the Harvard College Library, becoming the first woman reader allowed into its stacks. The result of her efforts was Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, published in 1844.

In the extract from the book included here, Fuller begins by presenting a glimpse of a thriving frontier society populated by settlers who are isolated by distance but united in common purpose. As she looks more closely, she sees the differing experiences of the sexes in these communities. The men have chosen to immigrate to the West, but the women have been forced to adapt to western conditions as best they can. Referring especially to female settlers from urban American and British backgrounds, Fuller describes how ill prepared they are to enjoy the outdoor pleasures of the region. Mothers and daughters are left to maintain households without any help. These observations of Fuller's push back against the stereotype of the rugged pioneer woman that was quickly becoming part of American folklore.

Perhaps because of her own highly cultured background Fuller shows particular insight into the conditions of educated middle- and upper-class women on the frontier. She notes that their education has made them “ornaments of society,” rather than individuals able to cope with life on the prairie. Their upbringing has, in fact, hindered their ability to perceive the natural beauty around them. Fuller mentions their inability to “ride, to drive, to row, alone,” making a call for feminine self-sufficiency she would intensify in later writings.

Fuller looks to the daughters of such women for any hope of a better future. But she fears that the outlook of their mothers will limit their ability to fully embrace rural life. She blames “the fatal spirit of imitation, of reference to European standards” as the source of this inhibiting influence. This desire to break with Old World standards and establish uniquely American cultural forms is found throughout the writings of Fuller, Emerson, Thoreau, and other Transcendentalist thinkers. In Fuller's case, the issue takes on an acutely personal dimension as she laments the stunting of youthful spirit by mothers overly concerned with “delicacy.” The “language of nature” is ignored in favor of “education” that stultifies.

In conceiving of something better Fuller imagines frontier schools that could awaken students to life around them instead of merely teaching them to imitate the ways of the urban East. In drawing a contrast to the rough but wholesome culture of the American West, she cites “some English Lady Augusta”—referring to Augusta Bruce, an intimate friend and attendant to Britain's Queen Victoria—as a model of female refinement. Such Old World elegance could pale in comparison with the “new, original, enchanting” kind arising on the frontier. Fuller envisions a new sort of woman emerging out of the West, one both skilled in the domestic arts and capable of embracing the natural world around her. Such a woman would not suffer from the lack of petty big-city pleasures.

Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 met with a mixed critical reception. Some reviewers complained of its lack of structure and its passages of stiff, overly mannered prose. But the Christian Examiner spoke for Fuller's admirers when it praised the book as “a work of varied interest, rich in fine observation, profound reflection and striking anecdote” (qtd. in Myerson, p. 3).