"It should be remarked that, as the principle of liberty is better understood, and more nobly interpreted, a broader protest is made in behalf of women. As men become aware that few have had a fair chance, they are inclined to say that no women have had a fair chance"
About this Quote
Fuller ties the maturation of the idea of liberty to the widening of sympathy and justice. When liberty is understood not as a narrow privilege but as a universal moral claim, it forces a reckoning with how entire classes of people have been denied its benefits. The phrase "more nobly interpreted" signals a generous, principled reading of freedom that refuses exceptions, loopholes, and convenient hypocrisies. Under that light, the plight of women stops being a private matter and becomes a public grievance, deserving of protest as broad as the principle itself.
The shift from saying that few women have enjoyed fair chances to saying that no women have had a fair chance is crucial. Fuller is highlighting a move from anecdote to structure. A society may point to a handful of accomplished women as proof that the doors are open, but such exceptions obscure the larger pattern: legal coverture, lack of property rights, barred professions, limited schooling, and the policing of ambition. When the gates are closed by design, individual triumphs do not refute oppression; they expose its scale. The fair test of capacity requires fair conditions. Without those, judgment of womens abilities is a rigged verdict.
Written amid the ferment of the 1840s, alongside abolitionist struggles and transcendentalist calls for moral consistency, Fullers argument in Woman in the Nineteenth Century presses the logic of American liberty to its universal conclusion. If natural rights are real, they cannot stop at the threshold of gender. As men who championed liberty in politics and religion recognized the systematic exclusion of women, their skepticism of female incapacity gave way to solidarity. Awareness deepened into advocacy.
The larger lesson extends beyond her era. As a principle is applied more honestly, systems of exclusion become impossible to ignore. A noble interpretation of liberty does not merely tolerate womens advancement; it demands the dismantling of the conditions that made advancement nearly impossible in the first place.
The shift from saying that few women have enjoyed fair chances to saying that no women have had a fair chance is crucial. Fuller is highlighting a move from anecdote to structure. A society may point to a handful of accomplished women as proof that the doors are open, but such exceptions obscure the larger pattern: legal coverture, lack of property rights, barred professions, limited schooling, and the policing of ambition. When the gates are closed by design, individual triumphs do not refute oppression; they expose its scale. The fair test of capacity requires fair conditions. Without those, judgment of womens abilities is a rigged verdict.
Written amid the ferment of the 1840s, alongside abolitionist struggles and transcendentalist calls for moral consistency, Fullers argument in Woman in the Nineteenth Century presses the logic of American liberty to its universal conclusion. If natural rights are real, they cannot stop at the threshold of gender. As men who championed liberty in politics and religion recognized the systematic exclusion of women, their skepticism of female incapacity gave way to solidarity. Awareness deepened into advocacy.
The larger lesson extends beyond her era. As a principle is applied more honestly, systems of exclusion become impossible to ignore. A noble interpretation of liberty does not merely tolerate womens advancement; it demands the dismantling of the conditions that made advancement nearly impossible in the first place.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Margaret Fuller, 1845 (expanded from essays published in The Dial). |
More Quotes by Margaret
Add to List
