Woman Thinking: Feminism and Transcendentalism in Nineteenth-Century America

This is potentially the most clear-sighted analysis of Transcendentalist gender-essentialism and its constructive uses to date. There is a growing interest in women identified with Transcendentalism beyond Margaret Fuller, as well as in certain aspects of their involvement in the women’s rights movement. No one else to date, however, has attempted a narrative of the whole, let alone with this double grounding in feminist and Transcendentalist history and grasp of feminist theory. The argument for post-bellum Transcendentalism is itself an important contribution to collective rethinking about periodization and feminization.

This work expands nineteenth-century women’s intellectual history following a trajectory from Margaret Fuller’s work through the contributions of Caroline Dall, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, and Paulina Wright Davis. Describing how these women explored the feminist implications of Transcendentalism, Wayne’s account will enrich our histories of that intellectual movement.

Tiffany K. Wayne’s ambitious and original new study, Woman Thinking, is a fascinating and important book, which succeeds in providing compelling new interpretations of two of the major phenomena of America in the antebellum years, the Transcendental Circle and the women’s rights movement. Brava for a thoroughly researched, powerfully argued and exceedingly well written piece of scholarship. This book should have a major impact on both literary and historical studies of nineteenth century America-and beyond.

Writing against the grain of received knowledge both of Transcendentalism and Feminism, Tiffany Wayne convincingly links these two great movements into a coherent and forceful re-evaluation of both politics and ideology in the nineteenth-century. This is an important contribution that is thoughtful and elegantly written.