WRIGHT, Frances (Fanny)

Born September 1795, Dundee, Scotland; died 13 December 1852, Cincinnati, Ohio

Also wrote under: Madam D'Arusmont, Frances Wright

Daughter of James and Camilla Campbell Wright; married William P. D'Arusmont, 1831; children: one daughter

Frances (Fanny) Wright was a 19th century anomaly: in the age of the passive True Woman, she created a utopian community dedicated to abolishing slavery in America, edited a liberal journal, and lectured passionately on women's rights.

In 1818 Wright and her younger sister Camilla enthusiastically sailed to America for the first time. Encouraged by the great human progress allowed in a democracy, Wright kept an epistolary record of her American experiences which she published upon her return to England in 1820 (Views of Society and Manners in America, 1821). Her optimistic portrait of America and her implied criticism of Europe angered many of her non-American contemporaries.

In 1824 Wright returned to the U.S. with her sister, and this time, turned her attention to what she considered America's most significant problem—slavery. Wright believed slaves could be prepared for freedom if they worked for their emancipation. To this end, she founded Nashoba, an experimental community in southwestern Tennessee.

Purchasing slaves who would "work out" their freedom, and gathering together concerned individuals, Wright devoted much of her energy in 1826-1827 to her community. Nashoba attempted a radical implementation of sexual as well as racial equality. Wright declared that at Nashoba "no woman can forfeit her individual rights or independent existence." Because of her outspoken attitudes about sexual equality and because the white overseer at Nashoba and a black woman began "living together," Nashoba soon gained a notorious reputation, and was labeled "Fanny Wright's Free Love Colony." Wright herself became known as a "female monster," who wished to destroy marriage and the family. Though Nashoba suffered from a lack of fresh food, comfortable living arrangements, and economic stability, Wright did accomplish one goal—she took the Nashoba slaves to Haiti and settled them there.

In 1828 Wright became the editor of the New Harmony Gazette (soon to be renamed the Free Enquirer). Wright became disillusioned with a community that could not support itself and was constantly the subject of controversy. During the ensuing two years, she and her coeditor Robert Dale Owen (founder of the utopian community in New Harmony, Indiana) energetically urged women to break the fetters of false conventions and prejudices. Wright, purporting to be the "first woman speaker on the American platform," lectured widely, advocating increased rights for women and for workingmen. Wright was horrified a marrying woman "swore away her person and her property"—she impelled her audiences, in her Enlightenment-like style, to listen to reason. Always she lambasted cultural pressures which compelled women to be meek and obedient.

In 1830 Wright's vacation to Europe was indefinitely extended by her sister's sudden death in 1831 and her own hasty marriage to William Phiquepal D'Arusmont, a former Pestalozzian teacher at New Harmony. From 1930 on, Wright traveled extensively between the U.S. and Paris where her child and husband resided. She wrote little during this period and she spent the final years of her life battling her husband in court for her property and for custody of her daughter. She obtained neither, and died crippled and alone—a fitting end, many believed, for America's first woman-rights' advocate.

Other Works:

Altorf, a Tragedy (1819). A Few Days in Athens (1822). Course of Popular Lectures (1829). Fables (1830). England the Civilizer: Her History Developed in Its Principles (1848). Biography, Notes, and Political Letters of Frances Wright D'Arusmont (1849, reissued on microfilm, 1980). Life, Letters and Lectures (enlarged ed. of 1849 publication, 1972).

Bibliography:

Bartlett, E. A., Liberty, Equality, Sorority: The Origins and Interpretation of American Feminist Thought: Frances Wright, Sarah Grimke, and Margaret Fuller (1994). Follis, J. T., Frances Wright: Feminism and Literature in Ante-Bellum America (dissertation, 1983). Gilbert, A., Memoir of Fanny Wright (1855). Hartley, D., "The Embrace of Nature: Representations of Self and Other by Women Travel Writers of the Romantic Period" (dissertation, 1992). Kissel, S. S., In Common Cause: The "Conservative" Frances Trollope and the "Radical" Frances Wright (1993). Kuntz, K., "Toward a Religion of Humanity: Frances Wright's Crusade for Republican Values" (thesis, 1998). Lane, M., Fanny Wright and the Great Experiment (1972). Morris, C., Fanny Wright: Rebel in America (1984, 1992). Mullen, R., Birds of Passage: Five Englishwomen in Search of America (1994). O'Donnell, M. M., Reflections on a Free Enquirer: An Analysis of the Ideas of Frances Wright (dissertation, 1979). Perkins, A. J. G., and T. Wolfson, Fanny Wright: Free Enquirer (1939, 1996). Rutherford, V., "A Study of the Speaking Career of Fanny Wright in America" (dissertation, 1960). Waterman, W., Fanny Wright (1924). Sandlund, V. E., "To Arouse and Awaken the American People"—The Ideas and Strategies of the Gradual Emancipationists, 1800-1850 (dissertation, 1996).

Reference works:

Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States (1995).

Other references:

American History Illustrated (April 1980). Indiana's Guerrillas of the Philippines: Fanny Wright (audiocassette, 1987). Lerner, G. Frances Wright (audiotape, 1962). THQ (Jan. 1932, Dec. 1947).

—CAROL A. KOLMERTEN