Frances Wright
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Frances Wright (September 6, 1795–1852) was a lecturer, writer, feminist, abolitionist, and utopian.
Wright was born to a wealthy family in Dundee, Scotland, the daughter of James Wright, designer of Dundee trade tokens. When she was orphaned at the age of three, she was left with a substantial inheritance. By the age of 18, she had written her first book. She emigrated to United States in 1818, and with her sister toured from 1818 to 1820. She became enamored with the young nation and became a naturalized citizen in 1825. Wright advocated abolition, universal equality in education, and feminism. She also attacked organized religion, greed, and capitalism. Along with Robert Owen, Wright demanded that the government offer free boarding schools.
Wright was the co-founder of Free Inquirer newspaper and authored Views of Society and Manners in America (1821), A Few Days in Athens (1822), and Course of Popular Lectures (1836). Wright became the first woman to lecture publicly before a mixed audience when she delivered an Independence Day speech at New Harmony in 1828.
In 1825, Wright founded the Nashoba Commune intending to educate slaves to prepare them for freedom. Wright hoped to build a self-sustaining multi-racial community of comprised of slaves, free blacks, and whites. Nashoba was partially based on Owen's New Harmony settlement, where Wright spent a significant amount of time. Nashoba lasted until Wright became ill with malaria and moved back to Europe to recover. The interim management of Nashoba was appalled by Wright's benevolent approach to the slaves living in Nashoba; rumors spread of inter-racial marriage and the Commune fell into financial difficulty, which eventually led to its demise. In 1830, Wright freed the Commune's 30 slaves and accompanied them to the newly-liberated nation of Haiti, where they could live their lives as free men and women.
The modern-day city of Germantown, Tennessee, a suburb of Memphis, is located on the land on which Wright situatated her community.
Wright's opposition to slavery and that of Robert Dale Owen (Robert Owen's son) contrasted to most other Democrats of the era, though their artisan radicalism distanced them from the leading abolitionists of the time. (Lott, 129)
Wright married a French physician, Guillayme D'Arusmont, with whom she had one child. They later divorced.
As an activist in the American Popular Health Movement between 1830 and 1840, Wright advocated women being involved in health and medicine. After the midterm political campaign of 1838, Wright suffered from a variety of health problems. She died in 1852 in Cincinnati, Ohio, from complications resulting from a fall on an icy staircase.
[edit] Further reading
- Celia Morris (1984). Fanny Wright: Rebel in America. ISBN 0-252-06249-3.
- Eric Lott (1993). Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509641-X.
- Susan S Kissel (1983). In common cuse: the "Conservative" Frances Trollope and the "radical" Frances Wright. Bowling Green. ISBN 0-87972-617-2.
- William Randall Waterman (1924). Fanny Wright. OCLC 3625578.
Historical Fiction:
- Edmund White (2003). Fanny: A Fiction. Hamilton. ISBN 0-06-000484-3.
