Mesmerism and Feminism: Boston Women's Intellectual Movements in the Antebellum Period

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This study aimed to clarify the involvement in and contribution to the American Renaissance by Margaret Fuller, Peabody sisters and other “transcendental” women who lived and moved in the intellectual circles in antebellum Boston. The idea of the American Renaissance and transcendetalism has been criticized for its overemphasizing a small number of white male writers and ignoring contemporary women’s activit ies and contributions. Inspiring each other, these women ignited Transcendentalism, the America’s first cultural awaking in the era of the nation’s self-discovery and the Westward Expansion. By addressing their spiritual and intellectual transcendence, this study shed a new light on the richness of the literary and political activities of antebellum Boston women and their relationships to the American Renaissance and Transcendentalism, which had been formed around the white male luminaries such as Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman.