An observation. Kindle has the option to view the highlights other readers have made within the book on my Kindle while I am reading. I have this feature turned on because I find it fascinating to see what other people thought interesting and worth noting while they read. About the time I was reading Bleak House on my Kindle last summer I began to notice that people tend to highlight the same passages. Was this just because the passages were recognized as important by multiple readers? Or was there something else going on?

I’ve kept my observing eye open over the months, and it just seemed more and more bizarre that I would run across passages that indicated “highlighted by four Kindle users” or five or six but never just “one.” So I began to wonder, do people reading on their Kindle with the view other reader’s highlights turned on tend to underline a passage because someone else has already done so? Does a reader think, a couple other people thought this passage was important so I should underline it too?

I decided no, it was just coincidence. Until today. As I was reading a A More Perfect Heaven this morning I again noticed that the same passages were highlighted by multiple people. I dismissed it as coincidence until I reached this passage:

equant—in effect a second axis of rotation, off-center from the true axis.

This half, out of context, nonsensical incomplete sentence was highlighted by six Kindle users. Six! Since I read this today I know the context, but by next week or by the time I finish the book, if I saw that in my highlights I would have no idea what it was talking about. Why would six people highlight this?

The only thing I can think of to explain it is that one person highlighted it and then the next person thought they should highlight it too and then because two people highlighted it the third person thought it should be highlighted, and so on until it has accumulated six highlights. For the record, I did not highlight it.

No longer am I able to excuse as coincidence the tendency for the same passages to be highlighted by so many people. I find this sheep-like behavior in highlighting to be a bit disturbing. I would expect some overlap between readers but nothing this consistent. Does it stem from lazy reading? Or maybe a certain lack of reading confidence? Or perhaps people are afraid of looking stupid by highlighting the “wrong” passages so highlight the same ones others before them have?

When I read on my Kindle I highlight a lot, much more than I would if I were reading a print book. I do this because I can’t page back through my Kindle when I am done looking for a passage that was on the left hand side of the page near the bottom about a quarter of the way through the book somewhere in chapter four or five. So if there is a fact or interesting tidbit I think I might want to know for later when I am blogging about the book I highlight it. As a result, the number of highlights for A More Perfect Heaven has already grown since I began reading it and a good many of my highlights have not been highlighted by others. I plan to keep an eye on the highlights for this book to see if people who read it after me begin highlighting any of my highlights. I’ll let you know if there are any interesting observations to be made.

Fuller wants to write a biography of Goethe but it is a big project and she believes she should visit Germany. Since she needs money she puts off this project and instead works on penning critical articles for American Monthly Magazine and translating some poems by Goethe.

Emerson’s star is on the rise at this time. Fuller probably saw him preach several years earlier and wanted to meet him but was too shy. In late 1834 Fuller gave a manuscript of some poems by the Italian poet Tasso that she has recently translated to her friend Frederic Henry Hedge and asked Hedge to nonchalantly show them to Emerson. He did and Emerson was impressed enough that he wanted to meet her. But Fuller got shy and didn’t go. But she still wanted Emerson to notice her so in May 1836 she wrote an elegy on Emerson’s late brother, Charles. Unfortunately the poem appeared anonymously and Fuller wasn’t sure he’d know she had written it. Fuller’s friend Harriet Martineau praised Fuller to Emerson and his wife Lidian who then invited Fuller for a two-week visit. Finally, on July 21, 1836, Fuller arrived at Emerson’s Concord home. Unfortunately, Emerson was under the impression that Fuller had come to visit his wife, not him.

Fuller was very plain, had a nasal voice and a bad habit of incessantly opening and closing her eyelids. Her domineering and acerbic reputation also preceded her. Emerson was certain he would find it hard being in the same room as Fuller and that they would not likely get along. Nonetheless, Fuller managed to worm her way into Emerson’s good opinion and her two-week visit lasted three.

Emerson got Fuller a job working in Bronson Alcott’s experimental school. Alcott kept her so busy that she generally had only six hours a night to sleep. She had no time to pursue her own writing and study, and she and Alcott began having pedagogical differences. It also didn’t help that after 25 weeks she still hadn’t been paid. Alcott eventually paid her some money before his school closed but not even close to what she was owed.

During this time, however, she became part of the Transcendental Club. Fuller is often called a Transcendentalist but she really wasn’t. She agreed with them on many aspects of their philosophy, but ultimately she found the philosophy to be one only a well-off man could ever completely follow. The mind and soul were supposed to transcend the body but Fuller’s migraines, trouble with exhaustion and depression as well as the fact that she had to work for a living kept her from embracing the philosophy. She liked hanging out with the transcendentalists though because they allowed her to be intelligent and express her opinions because only the mind mattered, they could look beyond her sex. Eventually she edited the Transcendental journal The Dial. For this she was supposed to be paid but the journal never made any money and Fuller made herself ill from exhaustion from all the work she did to produce it.

Fuller really began to come into her own and earn money when she started hosting a series of conversations for women only so they did not have to feel intimidated by the presence of men or feel as though they needed to be deferential. Given Fuller’s need to always be in charge, her role as conversation leader was to “inspire listeners to offer their own reflections on the topic.” She and her conversations were a great success and it won her a large and dedicated following.

As a woman and an intellectual in nineteenth century America, Fuller had to constantly reinvent herself in order to make her way in the male-dominated world. As she struggled, Fuller became more aware that people, especially women, were unable to achieve their highest selves because of social and economic problems as well as a lack of education. These issues were not ones they brought on themselves but often were imposed upon them. Her essay “The Great Lawsuit” was her first foray into feminism and her later book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century began here. In the essay Fuller notes:

in the minds of too many men, there was “a tone of feeling towards women as towards slaves,” Fuller insisted that the only way to keep the subjection of women from becoming permanent was to elevate them from their voiceless position and to permit them to vote, to advocate, and to legislate for themselves. Yet Fuller also maintained that legal freedoms were only a means toward a more essential end. The transcendent goal was, as always in her thinking, self-discovery and development.

When she published Woman in the Nineteenth Century in February 1845, she hoped it might sell a thousand copies in a year or two. It sold 1,500 copies in the first week.

Fuller’s writing made the great newspaper man Horace Greeley take notice. He invited her to move to New York, live in his house, and write a regular column for the paper. Fuller put him off for over a year but eventually took him up on the offer. She loved New York and her release from the comparatively provincial Boston.

After a few years she had the opportunity to go on a European tour with some friends. She didn’t have the money for it so Greeley offered to make her the first female foreign correspondent. She sent regular weekly dispatches to the paper on the countries she was visiting, the culture, the people. Eventually she ended up in Italy where she fell in love with Rome.

She also fell in love with a man eleven years her junior, Giovani Angelo Ossoli. He fell in love with her first and then wormed his way into her heart. Giovani convinced her to have sex. Unfortunately for Margaret, it took only one night of passion for her to become pregnant. The two married but kept it a secret. Ossoli was in the service of the Civil Guard and his family in tight with the pope. Margaret was not Catholic and if Ossoli’s family found out he would be in danger of losing his title and inheritance to his younger brother.

It wasn’t long before the Ossolis found themselves in the midst of the Roman uprising and wars to unite Italy. Fuller gave birth to Angelo Eugenio Filippo Ossoli on September 5, 1848. Fuller developed “nursing fever” and was unable to nurse the baby. She hired a wet nurse and left “Nino” in the town of Rieti while she returned to Rome. Perhaps if circumstances had been different Fuller would have been a better mother. She genuinely thought Nino was safe in Rieti but later discovered that he had almost died from illness and starvation.

Ossoli fought for Rome’s freedom and Italy’s unification but the cause was lost. He and Margaret and baby Nino had to make a quick and quiet exit from Rome and hid out for awhile in Florence until they were discovered and made to leave Italy entirely.

And so begins Fuller’s fateful journey back to America. Her friends all told her not to come, to finish writing her book on Italy in Europe. But Fuller insisted she needed to return to America. They booked passage on a ship whose experienced captain died of smallpox before they had reached Gibraltor. The ship was taken over by Henry P. Bangs who had only captained one or two other ships in his life. By the time they crossed the Atlantic and were running up the eastern seaboard, they were being chased by a hurricane. The inexperienced captain had no idea. Nor did he have his bearings correct. On July 19, 1850, the ship ran aground on a sandbar about 200 yards from Fire Island. The inexperienced Bangs made a bad job of it and didn’t know what to do.

The wind and sea were getting heavier as the storm approached. The crowd that gathered on the shore could have launched a rescue but just stood and watched and waited for the ship to break apart and wash ashore so they could scavenge the passengers’ belongings. A few of the crew decided to try and swim to shore. They made it and implored the people on shore to help with a rescue. Still the growing crowd refused. Hours went by and things just kept getting worse. Several more people jumped in only to drown. Fuller was not a good swimmer, she was terrified of water and since she was a child had nightmares of drowning. She would not jump in and she would not leave her child. Ossoli would not leave Fuller.

After ten hours the ship began to break apart. The captain had already jumped ship. The only ones left onboard was the ship’s steward and the Ossolis. The steward loved Nino and declared he would get him to shore safely. But before he could even jump into the water, he and Nino were thrown overboard. Twenty minutes later their bodies washed ashore. Ossoli became caught in the rigging and washed away. His body was never found. No one knows if Fuller jumped or was washed overboard, only that her body was never found. She was only forty.

I am not ashamed to say that I cried over Margaret’s death. Her story is one of a woman trying to achieve her highest self against all the odds. She almost gave up a few times, but something would always happen to pull her back from the brink. Matteson does a fantastic job of telling her story and examining her legacy but perhaps her friend James Freeman Clarke says it best:

Margaret Fuller’s greatest work was in showing other people the unique power and genius in themselves and, once they had discovered that uniqueness, giving them the urging, the cajoling, and the love that they required to bring their own greatness into the world.

My impression of her from reading about Emerson turned out to be completely wrong. She is definitely strong-willed, but she was not in love with Emerson nor did she flirt shamelessly with anyone. In fact, most people, especially men, didn’t like her much. She was not a very attractive woman, had a curved spine, squinted from nearsightedness, fought with her weight her whole life, suffered from bad skin as a teenager, and was pretty much smarter than everyone she else and liked them to know it.

Born Sarah Margaret on May 23, 1810, she was the first child of Timothy Fuller and Margarett Crane Fuller. Timothy had high educational ambitions for his daughter, unusual at the time. He taught her himself and was quite exacting. When Fuller was six, Timothy began teaching her both English and Latin grammar. Not long after that he started her on Greek. By the age of nine she was “reading a compendious list of histories and biographies in English, as well as many of the major works in the Latin canon.” Lucky for Fuller she was very much a child-genius and sucked up the lessons like a Hoover.

As her mother began to have more children, several of which were boys, and as her father got elected to Congress and spent more and more time away, Fuller was no longer the center of her parents’ attention. She genuinely enjoyed learning, but it also became a means for her to garner some small bit of affection from her father and mother.

But so much studying took its toll on her health. She began to suffer from migraines as well as nightmares. As an adult she often wished that her parents had insisted she spend time outdoors running around in the fresh air to counter all the time she spent studying and reading.

Eventually her father enrolled her at Cambridge Port Private Grammar School, a boys’ college preparatory school that admitted girls on a part-time basis. Fuller’s competitive nature and desire to excel and impress her father came to the fore. While being the smartest student in school is great, she had no social skills and no friends. She was lonely, and because she knew she was smarter than everybody she conducted herself with an air of superiority that kept anyone from being inclined to like her.

So Margaret was sent off to Miss Susan Prescott’s Young Ladies’ Seminary to learn how to be a lady. To say she resented this would be an understatement. But Fuller was taken under the wing of Miss Prescott herself who also believed in serious instruction. Fuller made a few friends, though her penchant for making scathing remarks about her peers made it difficult to keep even the friends she did make.

Fuller left Miss Prescott’s just before her fifteenth birthday. He mother wanted her back at home to help take care of and teach her younger siblings. This is when her formal schooling ended and her self-education began.

Oh, how I’ve gone on about her childhood, but it is these early years that really shaped the woman she became.

Her self-education took the form of reading everything she could get her hands on. She discovered Goethe, like so many others about that time, and considered him a model for how she would like to shape her own intellect. She became friends with some leading intellectuals and was able to publish some translations of Goethe and planned to write a biography about him.

In 1835 at the age of 25, she came very close to dying from typhoid. Just days after she began to recover, her father died of cholera. Her mother didn’t know anything about running the farm her father had bought to “retire” to. Margaret stepped up and tried to learn the business but as a woman she had no legal powers and her uncle took over administering the estate. Far from being caring and sympathetic, he held the purse strings tight and would not give Margaret or her mother money for things he did not agree with. So Fuller decided it was time she tried to earn her own money before her uncle starved them all.

And here I will stop and continue tomorrow. I didn’t plan on writing so much but Fuller is such a fascinating woman that I can’t help myself.

One book I recently finished, The Lives of Margaret Fuller by John Matteson, I will be writing a post on in the next day or so. But in case you are wondering, it is really good.

There are three books I am actively reading at the moment. For my daily public transit commute, I am reading My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin on my Kindle. I am so very much loving this book. Sybylla, our intrepid young narrator is full of vim and sass and not a few misconceptions, but she is so lively and well-meaning that I just love her. The book sometimes has a Pride and Prejudice meets Jane Eyre in the Australian Outback feel to it. I’m about 70% through the book so I will probably be done or close to done by the end of the week.

In the evenings before bed I am reading The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen. It is the Slaves group read that is scheduled for discussion on January 31st. The story begins on a ranch in modern day rural Montana which sometimes doesn’t feel all that different from rural Australia. Sometimes. Our narrator is twelve-year-old Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet, T. S. for short, a precocious boy who loves science and feels compelled to map everything. This book is not a straightforward narrative though. Printed in a somewhat oversized format, there are margin notes and illustrations and maps by T.S. that slow down the reading of the main text but not in a bad way.

The third book I am actively reading is Rereading Women by Sandra M. Gilbert. This book is a must read for anyone interested in feminist theory and/ or literature by women. I’m into part two of the book and currently in the middle of an essay on the myth of the “Belle of Amherst” aka, Emily Dickinson. The essay prior to the one on Dickinson is about the mythology that has sprung up around the life and poetry of Sylvia Plath. One of the things I really like about Gilbert is that she writes in a highly accessible manner. You will not find an abundance of academic jargon in these essays. In fact, there is even an essay about academic jargon and whether feminist theorists are doing themselves and women in general a disservice by filling their essays and books with language that most women don’t understand. There is also the question of whether by writing in academic-speak, feminist theorists are trying to prove themselves to their male colleagues and fit themselves into a patriarchal idea of scholarship instead of subverting it as was intended by so many in the beginning.

I began reading Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James about two weekends ago and have been half-heartedly picking away at it hoping to like it but not doing a very good job of it. I had high hopes for this book, figuring if anyone could do an Austen spin-off it would be James since during a book reading of hers I attended once she commented that she reread all of Austen every year. Elizabeth and Darcy have been married six years, it’s the eve of a big annual ball at Pemberley, and someone is murdered in the woods of the estate. One of the difficulties I am having is that the characters feel flat. Darcy and Elizabeth are harmoniously and happily married, there is no spark, no witty repartee, no arguments, not even any bickering. They are dull and uninteresting. I am just past the 100 page mark and part of me is wanting to put it down and never finish it and another part is saying, well the murder just happened, maybe things will liven up a bit now so keep reading. If nothing else, if I finish it and don’t like it, I can “take one for the team” so to speak and warn you all away.

I’m also still reading Auden’s The Dyer’s Hand and Nabokov’s Lectures on Literature. Nabakov’s lecture on Bleak House is marvelous. He spends quite a lot of time talking about structure and how the architecture of the book is built up and put together. He is so concise and clear and he obviously likes Dickens, it is a pleasure to read.

Looking ahead, a book I’ve been in line for at the library will be mine by the end of the week, Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfied. It is a “romp through the history of fonts.” Totally geeky, right? I also have the first volume of Kill Shakespeare on its way. No line for this one. I requested it last week on a whim thanks to a review of the second volume by Isabella at Magnificent Octopus. I’ve been chomping at the bit to start reading Natalie Angiers’ The Canon but it will likely have to wait with these two books on their way.

Once I am done with My Brilliant Career on my Kindle though I will be reading either Longitude or A More Perfect Heaven by Dava Sobel. When my sister emailed me at the end of December that Amazon was having a one day only Dava Sobel e-book sale and one of the books was only $.99 cents and the other $1.99, I caved in and paid for my first e-books. Galileo’s Daughter was also on sale but it turned out after I did my science by women list, I found a copy of it on my bookshelves. For some reason The Planets wasn’t part of the sale or I would have gotten that one too. No matter, I am happy with the two I did get.

Good reading (for the most part) on the go and good reading to look forward to and the first month of the year is zipping by and in the middle of next week we will find ourselves in February already. Goodness!

In my defense, would you refuse a copy of Lionel Shriver’s The New Republic described as a page-turning thriller that explores the “relationship between terrorism and cults of personality?” Or could you casually delete an email offering a copy of The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits described as a “wildly imaginative and emotionally intense novel about mothers, daughters, and the psychic damage women can inflict on one another?” If you can say no to those, then you have greater will power than I do.

Now here I admit I have not read either author before. But both seem to write books I think I’d like and many a blogger has posted a review that made me think, “I should read Shriver / Julavits sometime.” No time like the present, right?

The clamor of books that I plan to “read next” is approaching deafening. I need to take a several month’s long reading vacation to feel as though I am making any progress. Perhaps a winning lottery ticket is in my stars this year. Oh the reading I could do if I were to win $100 million! In the meantime I think I’ll need to get earplugs.