The Great Lawsuit

References to humankind’s inheritance appear in the first few paragraphs of “The Great Lawsuit” and reappear periodically throughout the essay. Fuller uses this concept when discussing her notion that people are destined to rise to a more divine state. In other words, this elevated state is something they have a rightful claim to, much like an inheritance. Fuller likely uses inheritance to symbolize this idea because the Bible says that the righteous will inherit the earth. In achieving divine perfection, humans will inherit the world and be able to experience God’s kingdom and his love.

Fuller uses Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom and war strategy, to symbolize the masculine traits women possess. Women, Fuller says, can have qualities American society considers masculine without becoming masculine themselves. Likewise, men can have qualities society considers feminine without becoming feminine, for “[m]an partakes of the feminine in the Apollo, woman of the Masculine as Minerva” (para. 174). Few people dispute that Apollo was manly and Minerva womanly; thus, few people should dispute that a woman with some masculine qualities is still a woman, or that a man with some feminine qualities is still a man.