margaretfuller – Page 3 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

14 Fuller, Women, and War from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

In researching and writing my book on Giuseppe and Anita Garibaldi and the unification of Italy (A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi) I re-discovered the first American female war correspondent – Margaret Fuller — who I had first met in a college course on the Transcendentalists. I was once again fascinated by a life lived purposefully.

Then I found Tammy Rose’s podcast on the Transcendentalists – Concord Days – and was delighted when she asked me to guest for a discussion of Fuller’s work in Italy as both a journalist – and a nurse. — Rosanne

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Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Tammy: In America, we don’t really have titles. We don’t really understand that level of society but over there it’s a thing.

Rosanne: Even if there’s no money associated with it, there’s an honor to it. You are of the upper classes even if you don’t have the money to go with it and that’s a big deal.

Tammy: Exactly. Exactly. yeah so and and and also another important point you had you had mentioned this before, so Garibaldi’s wife had like gone into battle like really with a baby like on her. It’s like she’s literally — she’s not just a nurse she’s she’s also nursing like while she’s on the battlefront right?

Rosanne: That’s so beautifully said. That’s exactly right, right? They end up having four children and there’s a statue of her in Rome because Mussolini tried to use her reputation to support his work. Look how dedicated she was to her country. There’s a statue of her with the child at her breast while she’s riding and she was a great horsewoman and she trained the cavalry. The men trusted her because Garibaldi trusted her but of course after they had a couple of kids when they’re in Rieti and they’re doing all this stuff it was like now you can’t risk yourself dying. So please stay behind and behind meant you’re dealing with the bloody leftovers. You know we’re not even in M*A*S*H days where you’ve got legitimate drugs to help people. I mean they’re just — it’s carnage and that’s what her and Margaret were doing — working together in this hospital while they had their kids around and their men were off and maybe that report the next body that comes in could be your husband.

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13 Fuller and Her Relationships from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

Watch this entire presentation

Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Rosanne:…and it fascinates me because they’re also having relationships in their lives because Anita had been married to someone else and she ran away with Garibaldi. Her husband was an abuser and a terrible guy and then he eventually died. So they were able to get married but they had a couple kids outside of wedlock.

Tammy: That sounds familiar yeah

Rosanne: Exactly and yeah hello Margaret’s going to show up right with Ossoli who’s a beautiful gorgeous man who’s also fighting for Italy and they’re not married but they do get that little secret marriage in before the baby’s born because that’s very careful.

Tammy: As long as everything’s legal right like that’s that that’s actually what matters yeah.

Rosanne: Well because you know we forget nowadays because it’s not a big deal to us but it was all about inheritance, If you were not the legal child, you would not inherit any of the father’s money or land or title in this case. So you know she definitely wanted to make — I assume she wanted to make sure her child would be given all that he was owed.

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12 Fuller and Garibaldi from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

Watch this entire presentation

Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Tammy: So she gets to Italy and like what is her assignment? To like write every week or just whenever she wants or…

Rosanne: Whatever dispatches. So because of course, we don’t have as fast communication as one would love. So you’ve got to get whatever you get when you get it. you have to get to a place where you can transmit that information in the midst of there’s little battles happening everywhere you know. She’s just in Reiti, which is right outside of Rome and that’s where Giuseppe Garibaldi — who is the man who united Italy right — that’s his thing and that’s where I came more modern-day.

Tammy: Ooo look at that.

Rosanne: Yeah I was actually…

Tammy: I feel like during this conversation you should just be like and this is the book I wrote and then this is the book…

Rosanne: Well this one I was asked to do a historical novel based on Garibaldi who is this hero in Italy for organizing and what happened was he and his wife Anita — who’s a Brazilian woman — because he left Italy. He went to Brazil. Tried to get some stuff happening in Brazil. Didn’t work. He failed but he learned so much and there were a ton of Italian people living in brazil and they knew that his goal was to unite Italy, their home country, and so his wife Anita came with him to do that and she’s another fascinating woman and the fact that she and Margaret are going to become friends because they become nurses together taking care of the soldiers who fall in this battle.

Tammy: Wow

Rosanne:…and that fascinates me.

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11 Underestimated? from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

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Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Rosanne: …and here’s the person to send in terms of what Horace Greeley may be thinking. I mean she knows how many languages? So she’s going to be comfortable anywhere and maybe a woman can get more information from people — can get into different parts of society right? A general — a military guy — maybe not.

Tammy: Because she’s not intimidating in a separate country where they don’t know all of the stuff that she knows. Like her reputation does not precede her. She’s just a woman. She’s in skirts.

Rosanne: Right.

Tammy: You know why don’t I tell her all my secrets you know.

Rosanne: Exactly. Exactly and you know but of course she’s also an excellent writer and that again is what he needs. You’re going to get there. You going to get the information quick. You’re going to give it to me so I can have it in the newspaper and that will I have the scoop right? It’s all about who gets the scoop first.

Tammy: Yeah well and so she’s documented as the first female like international correspondent and war correspondent right?

Rosanne: Exactly and again now she even parallels the transcendentalists we could parallel a little bit with the Algonquin round table because Dorothy Parker and Edna Ferber are just a couple of the only women allowed in that circle.

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10 Fuller and Italian Reunification from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

Watch this entire presentation

Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Rosanne: My joke, I have Sicilian relatives that I visited and they always say, “Come there if you’re traveling in Europe because you see Greek ruins and Roman ruins” and you know mosques everybody, everybody invaded Sicily and took over at some point. So it’s like the whole world, in a nutshell, and my cousin’s actually a teacher of Sicilian literature and language and there are dictionaries that’ll give you the entire Italian language translated into Sicilian and it’s that much — that different.

Tammy: Love it.

Rosanne: Exactly and so what’s happening is is Margaret has read and heard about Mazzini, Giuseppe Manzini and he was a group called Young Italy and they wanted to create a union right? Which is what we did among all our various territories right? All our you know we became a union. So it was like getting a chance to live through our revolution to experience another country doing it.

Tammy: Wow yeah

Rosanne: …and I think that’s what drew her.

Tammy: Exactly because you’re seeing history like creating itself.

Rosanne: Exactly meeting the founders.

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09 Why Italy? from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

Watch this entire presentation

Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Tammy: Why does she go to Italy? What is going on and what is she excited about?

Rosanne: You know Italy — we forget because we had our founding right but in Italy, they were a scattering of different city-states basically up until we’re talking the 1860s is when this finally gets settled and it’s in the 1830s that this roiling begins. We should be all one country. Remember the roman empire. We owned the whole world. Now we can’t even own this little boot that’s part of us

Tammy: Right and Italy was all these like little like city-states and it wasn’t really the Italy that we know today.

Rosane: Austria owned some parts of it right and France owned some parts of it. Sicily was its own country. It was not part of Italy.

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08 Smart Women and Transcendentalism from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

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Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

It’s such an interesting thing because they — they spouted ideas about equality but it’s a different thing to have the intellectual idea that women should be and then here’s like — you use the word intimidated — and I think that is the perfect description because imagine like well I said it could happen but I didn’t know I’d run into someone who’s going to challenge my — I’m the smart guy in the room — like you get that right? You can — you can see how that would have, it would have shocked them and maybe their own wives had that capacity but weren’t given the ability to show it off.

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07 Emerson and “The Dial” from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

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Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Tammy: When it comes to the transcendentalist one of the big things is also The Dial right? That’s the biggest magazine. That’s the thing that sort of cements the idea of the transcendentalists and all these writers get published there and Emerson had asked her to be the main editor and he said that he was going to pay her and then he never ended up paying her.

Rosanne: Exactly. She didn’t even get a free place a cabin on his land to live

Tammy: Right right like his friend you know uh but I and and you know he would always put her up in his house whenever she wanted to come visit concord. She had an open invitation but you know his wife Lidian didn’t necessarily appreciate it and it wasn’t the best of relationships. So I and I feel like Margaret was never really maybe comfortable in the Concord world because they the guys here just didn’t understand how to deal with her.

Rosanne: Nor did the women right because you have to imagine they were probably — had they had some education — they knew they could do more but weren’t allowed to and then here’s this woman who’s getting to so there’s going to be this under you know layer of kind of jealousy but I don’t want to be jealous but I want that but I can’t have it.

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06 The Right to be in the Room from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

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Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Tammy: …and she’s constantly reinventing herself. Like that one of my favorite things about her is the conversations that she had with women which are kind of like modern-day podcasts where it’s like let’s just get everybody together and just talk. You know.

Rosanne: Well that’s and that goes into the 1960s. Their rap sessions right? That’s it you know consciousness-raising and in every generation, like we often teach that the beginning of women’s right or whatever you know you go back to Mary Wollstonecraft right and then think about that’s England but here in America those same conversations are being had.

Tammy: Yeah Yeah and I and I feel like she had to do so much fighting and but or not even like necessarily fighting but just like to reaffirm her right to be in that room or to you know be working as a correspondent for Horace Greeley’s paper.

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05 Margaret’s Education from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

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Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Tammy: …and it got her all over the place.

Rosanne: It did and I often compare her — when i’m talking to students about her — I compare her to John Quincy Adams, right, who at 10 was translating his own father’s paperwork and knew five or six languages and he’s going to be like — in my opinion — our smartest president. So she’s on par with him but not given the opportunities.

Tammy: Exactly and even in her day she was known as the most widely read woman in America and she talked her way into the Harvard library even though she couldn’t actually attend Harvard you know and she made sure that she could get the education that she wanted. She must have had this like internal drive and curiosity that just kept her going throughout her life.

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