Fanny Wright

In David Reynolds review of the biography Fanny Wright, Rebel in America by Celia Morris Eckhardt, he summarizes the public’s view of Fanny Wright as such:

To her enemies, she was the ''Red Harlot of Infidelity,'' whose ideas, if put into practice, would turn the world into ''one vast immeasurable brothel.'' To her admirers, she was a bold apostle of liberation and equality in an age of prudish sexual mores, widening class division and slavery.

Fanny Wright was an uncompromising social activist who seems to have been no stranger to controversy in her day. Originally born in Scotland, Wright traveled to the U.S. when young and while a proponent of the social system she found in place in the U.S. relative to what she viewed as the corrupt social and political fabric of Europe, she found no shortage of problems with the U.S. social system as well. While diverse in the causes she pursued, she was particularly active in promoting the causes of racial equality, female equality, and the plight of the poor. She was polemical in her attacks on organized religion, greed, and capitalism, and the resulting social injustices caused by these institutions.

In many ways, Fanny Wright feels like a “radicalized” version of Whitman. Whitman maintained similar points of view with respect to racial and female equality which he speaks about frequently in his poetry. Unlike Wright, Whitman was not willing to pursue more extremist ends though to achieve change in the status quo. He preferred to believe that the pleas of his poetry would be sufficient to ultimately affect change. Similar to Wright, Whitman also maintained a somewhat negative view of institutions such as the church and various aspects of the U.S. government. Instead of viewing them as inherently evil though, he took a softer stance viewing them as poor representations of the noble underpinnings which they theoretically were based on. It is unclear if Whitman ever met Wright, but it’s clear that he was a reader of her writing and was influenced by many of her ideas.