Background
She was born Sophia Willard Dana in 1803. Her father traveled abroad often and left his daughters to fend for themselves.
She was born Sophia Willard Dana in 1803. Her father traveled abroad often and left his daughters to fend for themselves.
In 1823, during one of his trips, the Dana sisters decided to earn their own living by teaching. She first met George Ripley during his final year as a student at the Harvard Divinity School in 1825. They were officially married on August 22, 1827, in a ceremony presided over by Abiel Holmes.
Fuller explained to Ripley her goals: "lieutenant is to pass in review the departments of thought and knowledge, and endeavor to place them in due relation to one another in our mind.
To systemize thought and give precision and clearness in which our sex are so deficient, chiefly, I think, because they have so few inducements to test and classify what they receive. To ascertain what pursuits are best suited to us".
Ripley was also among the few regular women guests of the male-dominated Transcendental Club in the 1830s, and she published an essay on women in The Dial. In July 1841, she The Dial published a letter from Ripley called "Letter from Zoar", an account of her experience visiting a communistic society of "Separatists" in Zoar, Ohio in 1837.
When Brook Farm adapted itself into a Charles Fourier-inspired phalanstère, she did not share her husband"s enthusiasm.
Their relationship became strained by the 1850s. She died in 1861. Her home on Baker Street is a site on the Boston Women"s Heritage Trail.
