Tragically,
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, died from tuberculosis in 1831 after only two years of marriage. His second wife, Lydian Jackson Emerson, was a devout Christian, witty conversationalist, feisty debater, and a member of the Transcendental Club when it met in the Emerson home. A major influence on her husband’s thought, she offered trenchant commentary on passing affairs and once wrote of the excesses of
American Transcendentalism in a text called “the Transcendental Bible.” She opposed slavery, supported women’s suffrage, and considered marriage to an unfit mate to be tantamount to slavery—holding that a childless woman would perhaps do well not to marry.