Woman in the Nineteenth Century

In the July 1843 issue of 'The Dial', Margaret Fuller wrote an essay entitled "The Great Lawsuit: Man versus Men; Woman versus Women:" The article aroused great controversy and she expanded it into Woman in the Nineteenth Century. The first major feminist document to appear in America, the book takes up the central issues of women's economic, political, intellectual, and sexual status in society. Although some of the worst legal abuses have been corrected, most of the attitudes and assumptions that she exposed are still in operation over a century later. Woman in the Nineteenth Century is not only an historical document, affording a revealing view of an important figure in the American Renaissance, but a manifesto for human rights today.