The Madonna and Margaret Fuller

Margaret Fuller uses the Madonna in analyzing and representing her own experience as a freethinking Protestant, feminist intellectual and political radical. Fuller also uses the Madonna as a symbol in depicting the generalized experiences of maidens, wives and mothers in 19th century. For Fuller, the Madonna embodies the perfect balance of self-reliance and the relational aspects of female identity.
Margaret Fuller, like her contemporaries Anna Jameson and George Eliot, was a feminist writer who found the Madonna a rich and empowering symbol for herself and for other women. Throughout [...]