1841: Emerson, Self-Reliance

Emerson in 1857.

Harvard

Emerson was 14 when he enrolled in Harvard College. He graduated, four years later, in 1821 (550).

Schoolmaster

For several years after his graduation, he was a "hopeless Schoolmaster" at several Boston-area schools (550).

Ministry

In 1825, he began studying to become a minister at Harvard Divinity school, and began preaching a year later. Like Unitarians at the time, he did not believe that "human beings were innately depraved" (551).

Emerson aligned with those in his church who "interpreted biblical miracles as stories comparable to myths of other cultures." In time, Emerson developed "a greater faith in individual moral sentiment and intution than in revealed religion" (551).

Widower

After the death of his 19-year-old wife in 1832, Emerson resigned his pastorate. He claimed that "he had become so skeptical of the validity of the Lord's Supper that he could no longer administer the sacrament" (551).

Because of the money his wife left him, he did not need to produce a constant income, and he "began a new career as a lecturer, speaking around New England in the lyceums" (551).

Transcendentalists

Emerson and his allies became known as "Transcendentalists" for their faith in "the mind as actively intuitive and creative" (551). In time, he gave more than fifteen hundred lectures (552).

Social reform?

Emerson "accepted the idea of racial differences and hierarchies."

In 1844, "he delivered a passionate antislavery address," and in time he condemned the Fugitive Slave Law as an "outrage" and slavery as "abhorrent."

He was an advocate for women's rights.

Emerson was "skeptical of social reforms that required group participation," and he never achieved national prominence as a social reformer (552).

Legacy

According to the Norton Anthology of American Literature: Beginning to 1865, Shorter Ninth Edition, Emerson is "arguably the most influential American writer of the nineteenth century--the writer with whom numerous other significant writers of the time sought to come to terms."