Mary Moody Emerson: Giving “High Counsels” to Women Still

by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Mary Moody Emerson was a New England philosopher living from 1774 to 1863. Only now is her place as an inventor of American Transcendentalism and model for independent women being acknowledged through such works as Phyllis Cole’s Mary Moody Emerson and the Origins of Transcendentalism. She is also an inspiration to modern women seeking new ways of being and perceiving themselves.

Mary’s biography shows how women of her time functioned effectively in community. When her father died in the American Revolution, Mary was sent to nearby relatives, beginning life in a series of households of women who came together to cope with widowhood, motherhood and raising children, poverty, and illness. Mary raised and tutored children, nursed young and old through serious illnesses, and assisted in raising money through home-based businesses, all in households run by women.

At the same time, she forged for herself an uncommonly independent life. She chose not to marry. She owned a farm, but usually preferred the freedom of living as a boarder elsewhere. She largely ignored decorum and was not always popular for speaking her mind and for her eccentric ways, such as wearing a shroud and sleeping in a coffin-shaped bed to welcome death.

She considered her “home” to be her journals in which she wrote the largely spiritual thoughts used, sometimes word for word, by her nephew, Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his Transcendentalist works. In correspondence and conversation she gave what Ralph called “high counsel” to young people, encouraging the girls to as incisive intellectual rigor as the boys. Just as she was part of women’s domestic communities, so she also formed intellectual communities among women through exchanges of journals, letters and meetings.

She was a woman of her time and her thoughts reflect its religious morays. She could be quite traditional and she would most likely disagree with much of current feminist spiritual thought. Yet, the spiritual connection she felt to the Earth and her desire was for a direct relationship between her own sacred soul and the Divine was, in its way, forward-thinking and might seem familiar to today’s women’s spirituality practitioners.

Mary lived in a time of transition between Puritan and Victorian societies as do we as we chart our way towards a 21st century global civilization. Her life gives many concrete lessons for women wishing to live effectively: solve problems through women’s communities, abjure social obligations for greater freedom, and mentor younger women. She also brought the best of the past into the present by creating women’s intellectual communities, as well as envisioning the future through letting her mind roam free to catch the impulse towards Transcendental and modern spiritual thought. But perhaps her best advice for women on untrodden paths is simply to always be true to yourself. Mary deeply influenced those around her and the world for generations to come by knowing who she was and expressing her ideas and values forthrightly in her own way. May we all have the courage to do the same.

Sources:

Battiste, Janice. A Good Aunt Is More than a Patron: Mary Moody Emerson, a Model of Self-Reliance. Women in Life and Literacy Assembly, Vol. 5, Fall, 1996. Available from: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/old-WILLA/fall96/Battiste.html.

Cole, Phyllis. Mary Moody Emerson and the Origins of Transcendentalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Mary Moody Emerson (Eulogy). Paper read before the “Woman’s Club” in Boston in 1869 under the title “Amita.” Available from: http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/mme.html.

Carolyn Lee Boyd writes stories, poems, memoirs, and other pieces for feminist and women’s spirituality publications including SageWoman, The Beltane Papers, Matrifocus, The We’Moon Calendar, and Moondance. Her novel, The Temple of the Subway Goddess, is scheduled for publication by Creatrix Books in the Spring of 2009. You are invited to read more of her writings and keep up with what’s new with her at her blogsite, http://Goddessinateapot.wordpress.com