Frances Wright

, Also known as Fanny Wright Frances Wright ( born September 6, 1795 in Dundee, Scotland, † December 13, 1852 in Cincinnati, Ohio), was a social reformer known for her time and one of the earliest and most fearless feminists. The brilliant orator and journalist, grew up in the UK, but spent her adult life mainly in the U.S., where they fought among other slavery.

Life and work

The father, a merchant in cloth goods is friends with Adam Smith, William Cullen and other prominent liberal-minded spirit workers. Frances is the age of three orphan and grows at a stern aunt. At 18, takes her to an uncle who is a professor of moral philosophy in Glasgow. Through him, a native of the U.S. widow named Craigmillar it is spiritually promoted within the meaning of the French Enlightenment, also interested in America. So they experienced, accompanied by her younger sister Camilla, in addition to Europe Travel stays in the USA 1818-20 and again in 1824. Posted to your 1921 book about America finds a positive response. It explains and justifies the local revolutionary aspirations.

Nashoba Community

Wright learns some English " radicals" to know, including Jeremy Bentham, also living in France veteran of the French and North American Revolution General Lafajette who loves you as soon as a daughter. With several younger men Wright romances. Second visit to America will be authorized if accompanied Lafayette. They also meet Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. From this trip, Lafayette and Wright move apart because the young, by the way heated " impulsive " Scot Robert Owen and his co-operative ideas for rational dress. They promptly acquires 1825 in Tennessee land on which it is founded Nashoba community, a settlement for slaves, free them and place them in appropriate countries intend once they have recouped his money. The company soon fails (Resolution 1828) on organizational, financial, hygienic and moral problems. So flirts the white overseer James Richardson, while Wright is absent on sick leave, with a slave and speaks in newspapers for free love from what the reputation of the project, especially in Victorian England is quite detrimental.

A first-class speaker

1928, Wright co-owner of the New Harmony Gazette, a free-thinking sheet of Owens son Robert Dale Owen, and begins in New York with lectures and courses on issues of women's rights, birth control, outdoor education, trade unions, against banking power, slavery, religion. The response can not be desired; Wright is considered the " first" speaker, which of course also reaps much hostility. In 1929 she starts together with junior Owen a new newspaper called The Free Enquirer ( Free researchers ) and builds at the same time a kind of folk high school.

In the same year, she accompanied the slaves of the now defunct colony in Tennessee by ship to Haiti, where they will be located. Also on board is William Phiquepal D' Arusmont, a physicist and teacher from the Owen community in New Harmony. After the death of her sister Camilla (1831 ), she married the 60 - year-old who has taken their caring. Their first child dies; the second, daughter Sylvia, coming in 1832 to the world.

Shipwreck in marriage

The marriage is happy not last long. After some back and forth Wright and D' Arusmont are separated from 1835 essentially. Later there will be inheritance disputes. While Sylvia remains with her father in France, Wright continues its advisory duties continued in New York, Boston and other North American cities. She now writes for the Boston Investigator and edited Manual of American Principles. 1851 plunged the 56 -year-old on an icy stairs and breaks his hip. At the agonizing consequences she dies a year later. It is said that their desire is to be read according to her grave stone in Cincinnati, the Dormant have there the cause of human rights married and built on them their fortunes, their reputations and their lives.

Contradictions

In the first place of their engagement was the fight against slavery, followed by education. Nevertheless, they must be counted among the earliest lawyers of women's liberation. Even more than their writings inspired her courageous appearance many women in the struggle for emancipation. In addition, the slim activist is described as " strikingly handsome ". She spoke fluent French and Italian, and was what the political and literary activities were concerned, always up to date. As a gifted author and speaker, she tended however to overestimate themselves and even to hold tenaciously to once formed judgments. Helpful and highly flammable, it lacked many of discipline and prudence. She gave a lot of independence, adventure, excitement - of course, also on security, such as their relationships with Lafayette and D' Arusmont testify, behind which presumably was her unhappy childhood. These contradictions moving her restless life.

Works

• Altdorf, drama, 1819 (via the Swiss struggle for independence )
• Views often Society and Manners in America, 1821
• ( Rave about Epicurus, by Walt Whitman ) A Few Days in Athens, Historical Novel, 1822
• Course often Popular Lectures, two volumes with their lectures, New York in 1829 and 1836