Margaret Fuller lived at a time when female gender roles were rigidly defined. The word most often used to describe her intellectual gifts was “unnatural.” During her adolescence and young adulthood, most people still believed in the literal truth of the biblical creation story: God created Eve to help Adam and to bear his children. She was fashioned from his rib rather than emerging as an entity in her own right. Such ideological indoctrination, implying the natural inferiority of women, played a role in women’s psychological development. While Margaret (like other women, such as George Sand and Elizabeth Barrett Browning) defied convention in pursuing a life of the mind, the novel portrays her as often feeling torn between a desire for domestic happiness and intellectual achievement.

The novel illustrates the tension between Margaret’s literary aspirations and her longing for domestic bliss, as evident in her relationships with the men in the Concord transcendentalist circle. These men treat her as an intellectual equal, and she finds them attractive because they understand and appreciate her. However, these men are attached to spouses who find Margaret threatening. Lidian Emerson is particularly harsh in her criticism of Fuller’s transcendental flights of fancy.