Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley
Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley
Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley was one of several strong, educated women who influenced Ralph Waldo Emerson. A classical scholar, Sarah married Emerson’s step-uncle Samuel Ripley, but Waldo and Sarah met much earlier when Emerson was eight and Sarah eighteen.
Emerson started writing to this brilliant woman when he was just ten years old. Sarah studied the classics and the sciences, and had a particular interest in European history and philosophers. She became a teacher, friend, and supporter to young Waldo Emerson. She encouraged him with scholarly exercises, writing: “Only think of how much importance I shall feel in the literary world.” [1] Over the next fifty years, Sarah maintained a significant presence in Emerson’s life.
The daughter of ship captain Gamaliel Bradford and his wife Elizabeth Hickling, Sarah showed early intellectual promise and while attending grammar school asked, “Father, may I study Latin?” [2] With encouragement from Gamaliel, and being fortunate enough to study at a school that taught boys and girls the same subjects, Sarah began her lifelong study of the classics.
The Emerson and Bradford family connection began when the Bradfords became members of William Emerson’s church in Boston. William—Ralph Waldo Emerson’s father—became minister at the First Church in 1799. By 1808 the Bradfords and Emersons were neighbors in Boston and they formed close, long-lasting relationships. Sarah was born in 1793, Emerson in 1803.
With encouragement from her father, Sarah attended a boarding school at age fourteen to study under Dr. Luther Stearns, a Harvard graduate. When her mother became seriously ill, Sarah had to leave school to care for her and her younger siblings. She continued to study independently while she handled these immense responsibilities.
In the 19th century, women were typically not encouraged to be scholars or to be independent in their views. When Sarah was eighteen she met Emerson’s aunt Mary Moody Emerson, a strong minded, self-taught, and independent woman, who was nineteen years her senior. Reminiscing on their first meeting together, Sarah wrote that Mary Moody knew of her “as a person devoted to books and a sick mother, sought me out in my garret without any introduction, and, though received at first with sufficient coldness, she did not give up till she had enchained me entirely in her magic circle.” [3] After Sarah’s marriage, communications between the women broke down, but eventually they reconnected and Sarah visited Mary in Maine in 1838.
While meeting her immense familial responsibilities, Sarah never stopped learning. She knew the languages of Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and German; read Homer and Plato; studied mathematics, philosophy, psychology, and theology. When Samuel Ripley proposed marriage, Sarah was hesitant—concerned about giving up her studies and her independence—but she acquiesced and they married in 1818. Fortunately, their marriage was an equal partnership. Samuel was the minister of the Church of Waltham, and he simultaneously ran a boys’ boarding school.
After marriage, Sarah continued to care for her younger siblings and taught “rusticated” Harvard University students at Samuel’s school—students who had been temporarily suspended from Harvard as a form of discipline. Ripley’s school offered Ralph Waldo Emerson his first teaching experience and Ripley’s church his first opportunity to deliver a sermon from the pulpit.
Sarah was a strong influence on the rusticated Harvard students, impressing them with her knowledge and confirming that, in fact, women could be as well-educated as men. A young student described Sarah, while teaching him Greek, as simultaneously shelling peas or holding a baby. The founder of Wellesley College, Henry Fowle Durant, credited Sarah with “inclining his mind in later life to the higher education of women.” [4]
When Sarah was teaching his university’s students, Harvard President Edward Everett remarked that she was capable of filling any professor’s chair at Harvard. [5] However, women were never considered for such roles at that time.
The Old Manse in Concord, MA, ca. 1895–1905. Samuel Ripley inherited the Manse from his father, Ezra, and he and Sarah lived there after he retired from the ministry. After Samuel’s death, Sarah continued to live there alone.
Sarah gave birth to nine children, two of whom died in infancy. After her aunt died, she adopted her baby as well. She successfully dealt with the difficulties of family life in the 19th century while supporting her husband in his ministry and teaching Harvard students. And at every opportunity she continued to expand her knowledge.
A close follower of Emerson’s career, Sarah attended his sermons as a minister and then his lectures as an independent poet and essayist. Recognizing that she was one of his strongest supporters, he wrote in his journal: “the kindness and genius that blend their light in the eyes of Mrs. Ripley inspire me with some feeling of unworthiness, at least with the impatience of doing so little to deserve so much confidence.” [6]
The Transcendental Club, formed in 1836 by Minister Henry Hedge and Waldo Emerson, invited women to join and Sarah was one of the five who participated. She joined Margaret Fuller, Lidian Emerson (Emerson’s wife), Elizabeth Hoar, and Ruth Haskins Emerson (Emerson’s mother).
Sarah died in 1867 at the age of seventy-four. Waldo Emerson wrote her obituary, praising her abilities and brilliance. “Nobody ever heard of her learning until a necessity came for its use, and then nothing could be more simple than her solution of the problem proposed to her. The most intellectual gladly conversed with one whose knowledge, however rich and varied, was always with her only the means of new acquisition. Meantime, her mind was purely receptive. She had no ambition to propound a theory, or to write her own name on any book, or plant, or opinion. Her delight in books was not tainted by any wish to shine, or any appetite for praise or influence.” [7]
— B. Ewen, Emerson House guide
WORKS CITED:
Ralph L. Rusk, The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), 37.
Joan W. Goodwin, The Remarkable Mrs. Ripley (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 15.
Qtd in Goodwin, 40.
Qtd in Goodwin, 154
Qtd in Goodwin, 133
Qtd in Goodwin, 137
Qtd in Goodwin, 2
