Introduction
0.1 Megan Marshall and Margaret Fuller: A New American Life
Megan Marshall’s inspiration to write this book is from a women’s history class at Harvard. After that, she becomes a Margaret fan. “I thought of her as very famous, but when I told people I was working on her biography, I got these blank looks,” she said; “I felt it was absolutely a tragedy if people didn’t know about her” (English 6). Thus, Marshall comes to write about Margaret Fuller for she wants to change such condition. Megan Marshall grew up in Pasadena, California, where, as an avid reader, she became entranced by nineteenth-century New England through the books of Lousia May Alott (the author of Little Women) and Margaret Sidney (the pen name of Harriett Lothrop, author of The Five Little Peppers). In college at Bennington and Harvard she studied American literature and American women’s history, which laid a profound foundation for her later writings. There she earned a B.A. in 1977. Marshall’s first publication was book reviews in The New Republic. She has written on American history, literature and women’s history in publications including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, and London Review of Books. Her first biography, The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism, won the Francis Parkman Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize, the Massachusetts Book Award in Nonfiction, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2006. Now she is working on her next book, a biography of poet Elizabeth Bishop.
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0.2 Literature Review
Though Margaret Fuller is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2014, it does not arouse much attention in the literary circle of America. However, it attracts steadily rising attention from the reviewers in newspapers and magazines. Book reviews are easily seen in America and all are full of acclaim and appreciation. They talk about the biography from different perspectives. Dwight Garner praises the book with the remark that “Margaret Fuller is as seductive as it is impressive. It has the grain and emotional amplitude of a serious novel . . . [and] pushes Ms. Marshall into the front rank of American biographers” (Garner 22) in The New York Times. Mary Kelley deems that “Marshall has designed her work for a general audience, and by the force of her graceful writing, and her narrative trajectory, she propels her interpretation of Fuller the inpidual, Fuller the woman, Fuller the activist, and Fuller the romantic into contemporary awareness and esteem” (Keelley 16) in The New England Quarterly. Susan Cheever in The Daily Beast finds Marshall’s prescient reading of Fuller’s life fascinating and well-researched. Elaine Showalter comments that “Shaping her narrative like a novel, Marshall brings the reader as close as possible to Fuller’s inner life and conveys the inspirational power she has achieved for several generations of women” (Showalter 23) in The New Republic. Kate Tuttle remarks that “In this thoroughly absorbing, lively new biography, Megan Marshall’s sympathy for Fuller—for the dilemma she faced as a powerfully intelligent woman whose time and place repeatedly thwarted her ambitions—nearly outpaces her admiration, though the book passionately evokes both. Fuller, so often misunderstood in life, richly deserves the nuanced, compassionate portrait Marshall paints” (Tuttle 27) in The Boston Globe. Donna Seaman recounts the important points in this book and then appreciates Marshall’s artistic skills and regards her book as “a magnificent biography of a revolutionary thinker, witness, and writer” (Seaman 12) in Booklist.
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Chapter One Positive Personalities
A strength1 perspective or orientation assumes that capitalizing on one’s best qualities is likely to lead to greater success than would be possible by making a comparable effort to improve areas of weakness (Lopez and Louis 1-8). This idea is a core tenet of positive psychology because it relates to understanding the presence of psychological health rather than the mere absence of psychological illness. Positive psychology has explored these personal strengths, such as wisdom, courage, love, resilience, self-esteem, high talent and fairness, and finds that strengths can also be used to leverage weakness at both an inpidual level and group level. In fact, “strengths develop best in response to other human beings” (Lopez and Louis 1-8). Thus, making a habit of noticing and identifying strengths in others can assist in an inpidual’s cultivation that changes the way he see himself and interact with the world every day. This chapter will identify the character strengths of Margaret, so that readers can learn how to mobilize their own strengths most effectively.
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1.1 Strengths of Wisdom
The first virtue cluster is wisdom. Wisdom is something that can assist us in dealing with challenging and complex situations (Baltes 611-626). Baltes and Staudinger define wisdom as an expert knowledge system concerning the pragmatics of life that links mind and virtue. This system includes knowledge and judgments about the meaning of life and the way to conduct one’s life in the pursuit of excellence, with regard to both personal well-being and the common good (Baltes and Staudinger 36-122). Two routes are arranged to display wisdom and its necessary antecedent, knowledge, from the most basic (love of learning) up to the most mature (perspective) (Seligman 47).
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1.2 Strengths of Courage
Like wisdom, courage is a universal virtue. Every life contains a measure of risk, threat, and challenge. At any age, courage can help us deal with unexpected health problems or other external troubles. Courage also comes into play when we face our inner world with less obvious, but perhaps more challenging concerns. Coping with intense and challenging emotions, making sense of a developing self-image, and reaching for meaning and authenticity in our lives are a sampling of these inner struggles. The way persons meet these external and internal challenges depends on the nature and quality of their courage. Cooper Woodard1 defines courage as “the ability to act for a meaningful (noble, good, or practical ) cause, despite experiencing the fear associated with perceived threat exceeding the available resources” (Woodard 174). It can be explained as the intentional pursuit of a worthy goal despite the perception of personal threat and uncertain outcome. The strengths that make up courage reflect the open-eyed exercise of will toward the worthy ends. To qualify as courage, such acts must be done in the face of strong adversity including bravery and resilience as two ubiquitous routes to this virtue (Seligman 49).
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Chapter Two Positive Emotions ......... 33
2.1 Margaret’s Satisfaction with the Past .......... 34
2.1.1 Gratitude to Her Father ..... 34
2.1.2 Forgiveness of the Lost Love .... 37
2.2 Margaret’s Happiness in the Present ........... 39
2.2.1 Bodily Pleasure from Nature ..... 40
2.2.2 Higher Pleasure from Flow ....... 42
2.3 Optimism about the Future .......... 45
2.3.1 Pursuit of Life Goals ......... 45
2.3.2 Self-efficacy ...... 49
Chapter Three Positive Environments ...... 53
3.1 Family Influence ......... 53
3.2 Friends’ Help ....... 56
3.3 Living Places ....... 59
Chapter Three Positive Environments
Environmental resources are aspects of the environments that promote health functioning and growth of inpiduals. Assessment of such resources is a vital component of positive psychology. However, there are also some psychologists who perceive that assessing environments is not useful because environments are not within an inpidual’s control and are too difficult to change. Therefore, the investigation of environments is neglected by some researchers and scholars. Though the environmental resources are less important compared with positive personalities and positive emotions, it is still largely believed that behavior, personal personalities and emotions can be shaped by environments. The study of the positive environments can be split into three parts: family influence, friends’ help and living places. This chapter will analyze the positive relationship and social surroundings around Margaret, which also play a decisive role in her life.
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Conclusion
In China, the psychological interpretation of a literary work focuses mainly on the negative sides of life, such as anxiety, depression, low self-esteem and post-traumatic stress disorder. However, this thesis tries to redress this imbalance by applying positive psychology which pays more attention to positive human traits and circumstances. Such attempt not only enlightens people with positive psychology but also provides a new perspective for the study of literary works. Therefore, this thesis is unfolded by integrating positive psychology with the literary work about a female writer. The analysis of this biography from the perspective of positive psychology might as well help many women identify and develop their strengths and virtues, buffering against misfortune and psychological disorder. This thesis analyzes Margaret Fuller’s positive personalities, positive emotions and positive environments around her from the perspective of positive psychology. Instead of investigating her weak points and her ways to avoid potential trauma, this thesis analyzes the strong points of Margaret, which helps her confront the immense adversity in life with great courage, rather than just escaping and avoiding the risk. Margaret’s positive personalities of wisdom, courage and confidence, positive emotions of optimism, gratitude and satisfaction benefit her most when life is difficult. In times of trouble, the positive environments like strong family ties help to bring out her positive personalities and her persified city life broadens her horizon and creates positive emotions, which are also the vital aspect for positive growth and self-actualization.
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The reference (omitted)