Frances Wright was born September 6, 1795 in Dundee, Scotland. After her parents died when she was two years old, Wright spent her childhood with a succession of relatives in Scotland. Living with her uncle, a professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow College, Wright explored the college's libraries and became especially intrigued by the few books on offer about the newly independent United States of America. A two-year tour of the United States with her sister provided Frances Wright with the material for her Views of Society and Manners in America, published in 1821, an enthusiastic account of Americans' patriotic idealism and the different attitudes that the new Americans had in terms of manners and general values in comparison to the British. Though this work was not the entirely feminist work that Wright would later become known for, it did put her into the public view.
Wright later formulated a plan to immigrate to the United States and create a southern settlement on which slaves could work to earn profits toward their eventual emancipation. Frances Wright purchased a tract in Tennessee called Nashoba and recruited slaves and abolitionists to join her. Though the farm never produced enough to achieve her initial goal, a result that was not unprecedented as Wright had little to no experience running a farm on her own. When Wright made a brief journey back to England, Nashoba and the politics surrounding it provoked a national scandal after its remaining settlers proclaimed a doctrine of free love. Upon her return to the United States, Wright paid to transport of the slaves to Haiti, where they would be free, and moved to another utopian community in Indiana.
An anti-clerical lecture tour consolidated Wright’s unpopularity among the American middle class. In these lectures, Wright recommended the abolition of capital punishment in the prisons of America, an option that was far more widely used in Antebellum America than today. Wright also advocated very strongly for women's rights, focusing especially on the need for birth control and liberalized divorce laws that gave more rights to the women. Wright was relatively well-received in New York City, the nexus of liberalism for its day. Wright relocated there and became a leading figure in the progressive working class politics of the day.
In New York, Wright met, had a child with, and married French doctor Guillaume D'Arusmont in the year 1831. The couple moved to Paris, where Frances Wright D'Arusmont occupied himself with raising their daughter and removed himself, and Wright, by extension, somewhat from the public eye. After the scandal, Wright occupied herself by traveling across the Atlantic several times throughout the 1830s, during which she lectured occasionally, but her audiences were small and the movements in which she had involved herself had either fallen apart or found other leadership that did not welcome her. Wright and her husband divorced in 1852, and he retained custody of their child. Wright died in Cincinnati in 1852.
Wright had a long lasting impact on the world. Wright was the first female in America to address mixed crowds at a public event, and was known to be one of the first and foremost American feminists, and female abolitionists. Wright was a champion of worker’s rights, and a sharp critic of religious institutions, even going through with an anti-Cleric lecture tour. Wright was the first American to write eloquently of sexual passion as a wonderful pleasure, not a sinful shame. She fought for birth control, divorce and property rights for women. Her lectures attracted thousands. Jefferson, Lafayette, Monroe, Madison and Andrew Jackson advised her on her doings, though by many accounts she rarely took their advice to any extent. Wright’s audacious attempt to cure slavery with an experimental commune scandalized the American South in particular and the whole of America in general. When Wright matured to an extent and learned to compromise somewhat in her views, no one noticed, as her image as a firebrand feminist had already been ingrained in the consciousness of the public. Wright’s fame remained a caricature of extremism, until she became a curiosity, and then was forgotten in her own lifetime. Estranged from her family, her only friends her lawyer and her carpenter, she died alone, though certainly not penniless.
In my opinion, Frances Wright was an excellent example of the Antebellum Feminist, and I am surprised that she is not better known, especially with the nicknames of “The Red Harlot of Liberty” and “the great she-Loco-Foco”. When reading about her views, her desire for the abolition of slavery, her desire for women to have the right to get a divorce, education, and access to birth control, I find her very easy to relate to. Wright was far ahead of her time in regards to feminism. She did not only fight for the right to vote, which is the seminal goal of many other feminists of her time, but for other rights as well.
However, this was also Wright’s downfall. Because Wright was so far ahead of her time in regards to her social views, she was unable to find common ground with much of the populace, including the very people whom she wished to help. While her ideas were good, her execution was also less than sound. Though the Nashoba Community in particular could have done fairly well, she was not able to execute it well enough to make any significant difference whatsoever. Though Wright did learn to moderate her views in public later in life, the damage- as well as the public’s perception of her- had already been done. This, I think, is one of the reasons why Wright is not as well known: even today, she is likely seen as a militant feminist, and as somewhat of a joke.