Dreaming a Woman′s Death

Abstract

Fuller wrote in her autobiographical romance that ′Every Roman was an emperor.′ When she and Ossoli left Rome after the defeat of the Republic, to take refuge as political exiles in Florence and then to return to America, she was a dispossessed empress; and dispossessed emperors or empresses did not expect to live long. ′You speak of my whole future,′ she wrote to William Channing. ′That future here on earth now seems to me short ... Indeed, now I have the child, I am often sad fearing I may not stay long enough.′¹ ′I never think of the voyage without fearing the baby will die in it′² Fuller wrote as early as November 1849.