Department of English
Writing the Journey: June 1999
"ëFor all the lineaments become fluentí: Margaret Fullerís Summer on the Lakes"
Susan L. Roberson
Auburn University
robers2@mail.auburn.edu
When Margaret Fuller visited Niagara Falls in the summer of 1843, she was fascinated not so much with the great falls, for she had heard too much of them to feel the sublimity and awe visitors to Niagara were supposed to feel. Rather, her attention was caught by other waterways, the whirlpool and its "hidden vortex," the swift rapids, the "fountain beyond the Moss Islands," and "the little waterfall beyond," which seemed to her "to have made a study for some larger design." Beyond her immediate delight in the beauty and swiftness of these waterways, in good Transcendalist fashion Fuller hears the vortex "whisper mysteries" and see "a sketch within a sketch, a dream within a dream" in the path of the waterfall. Entranced and "enchanted" by the water to see beyond its surface, to the mysteries and dreams that draw her, she finds that the "lineaments" between the solid rock and the swiftly running water "become fluent," opening to her possibilities of dream and genius" (73) she hints that the design she takes for her travel book Summer on the Lakes derives from nature, that like the vortex and waterfall her book will whisper mysteries and render fluent the boundaries we had supposed to be firm.
Emplotted by waterways -- fall, rapids, lakes, rivers -- and water crossings, Fuller's journey and her narrative are marked by fluidity and border crossings of various kinds. Framed by her sojourn at Niagara Falls and the boat ride back to Buffalo, the narrative recounts not only her adventures shooting the rapids and exploring Mackinaw Island, it is marked by numerous rivers and lakes, riverbanks and shorelines. Likewise, Fuller's extended discussion of the pinched lives of pioneer women later in the chapter is framed by multiple river crossings, a Fourth of July celebration, and an assertion that the "limitless is alone divine" (108). The proximity between descriptions of her physical journey and her exploration of political issues like the fate of the Native American and women's freedoms asks us to link the two together, to see the intellectual journeying in the physical movement across the topography. The lakes and rivers, streams and rapids she visits and writes about, then, are both markers of location and symbolic markers of theme, for the fluid quality of the water that so fascinates her and that so persistently runs through the narrative suggests freedom and the porousness of ideological, creative, and political boundaries. Just as the journey keeps returning to water passages and the margins along waterways, so too it keeps returning to a "geography of the possible" to themes of freedom and the possibilities for the self beyond the boundaries and borders that attempt to hold us, both central to her emerging feminism. Figured as a travel book about a summer's visit to the Great Lakes, Summer on the Lakes is also about traveling over and beyond boundaries.
At the same time, then, that Fuller is writing a travel narrative of where she went, what she saw, and who she met, she is also writing a narrative that uses travel, particularly travel on, by, or across waterways, as a metaphor to suggest the transcendence and the instability of geographical limits. Travel has historically opened up new knowledges and self-cognitions for those afoot; for women, travel and crossing over contested social spaces mimics and endorses a critique of social institutions and definitions of femininity, a project in which Fuller was and continued to be engaged. As Eric Leed points out, "Travel is clearly subversive of the assumption implicit in all social structures than an individual has one real, consistent persona and character," and as feminists like Doreen Massey argue, the traveling woman poses a threat to patriarchy and its institutions. Travel, then, connotes and encourages boundary crossings and new knowledges; likewise, the fluid, figured by waterways, connotes and encourages a view of the nonfixity of identity and social institutions, a project especially adapted by feminists.
Auburn University
robers2@mail.auburn.edu
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