Emerson and the Woman Question: The Evolution of His Thought

Abstract

N a newspaper article celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of Emerson's birth, Thomas Wentworth Higginson complained those who knew Mr. Emerson in the light of a reformer, as he surely did, would find precious little information given in direction by his biographers.' Noting the generally conservative character of the two most influential and popular biographies of Emerson, those by Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Elliot Cabot,2 Higginson was particularly distressed over their constitutional reticence in discussing the philosopher's role in both the antislavery and women's movements. It was a well-known fact, Higginson observed, that Mr. Emerson spoke several times at woman suffrage conventions, and cordially and sympathetically. Yet, he says, this is not mentioned in Mr. Cabot's memoir. If Higginson were to return today he would find scant progress has been made in the biographical treatment of Emerson's views on the Woman Question. While serious efforts have recently been made to recover the record of Emerson's important activities in the antislavery movement, very little is presently known about