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Murray
Hill Institute |
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| Cultural Corner | |
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“Remember the Ladies” At Murray Hill Institute our theme is “Women Transforming Culture.” As we look forward to having a positive influence on the twenty-first century, it is good to remember the wives, daughters, sisters and mothers of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were called upon to create the culture of a new nation that was to be different from all the cultures of Europe. The United States was the first major republican nation. The women who were closely involved with our earliest government had to make many choices: How would we dress? How would the President’s wife entertain? What kind of protocol would there be? While beginning with the practices of the courts of Europe, and rejecting anything inappropriate to a new Democratic society, Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Sally Jay (the wife of John Jay) and others set the tone for American Society. While this cultural identity crisis is only a small part of Cokie Roberts’ new bestselling Founding Mothers, the Women Who Raised our Nation, (William Morrow, 2004), her accounts of the fashions and protocol of the developing country are among the most fascinating parts of the book. Founding Mothers is intended to be a popular history. In this book, Roberts follows the lives of about a dozen women who were intimately involved with the birth of our country. She uses letters and diaries of the protagonists and their correspondents, and gives us many quotations so that the “ladies” (as they called themselves) are allowed to speak for themselves. (One wonders what those writing about the twenty-first century will do unless they can retrieve deleted e-mails.) Roberts paints these women as strong enough to take care of the family, the farm, and businesses while their husbands were at war risking their lives or overseas, for, in some cases, years. They bore the difficulties and dangers of childbirth and infancy, and yet were still interested in the politics and public life of their husbands’ great endeavor. The book is eminently readable, and flows well, even though Roberts has the difficult task of integrating a chronological sequence of history with individual narratives within it. For those of us who have not had an in-depth study of American History since eleventh grade, her telling of the Revolutionary period gives us the important facts—from the women’s point of view. The women depicted differ widely in personality, but all are patriots (except for Mrs. Benedict Arnold.) The star is Abigail Adams, wife of our second President and mother of our sixth. She was separated from her husband for a total of about six years during the first twelve years of marriage. John Adams was involved in the Continental Congress, the war, and then was sent to France to negotiate peace with England. This separation gives us a lot of letters. Abigail was capable, intelligent, and unafraid to speak up. She asks her husband, when setting up the laws of the new country, to “remember the ladies” (quoted on page 72.) In another letter she says, “If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women,” (quoted on page 76.) She uncomplainingly does her duty as the wife of a public figure and mother from whom many sacrifices are required, and speaks up for the dignity of women. There are a couple of flaws in the writing of the book. A good history is one that can be read for years without it seeming dated. Roberts has imposed some aspects of our own time on the text that will make it “dated” in a few years. Many times Roberts responds to the text she has just quoted with sentence fragments such as “Amen, Sally,” (p. 172), “Fairly frisky stuff for a Puritan woman” (p. 182) or “Sounds like an interview today” (p. 21). These comments at first were amusing, but as they continued, they seemed patronizing, or more appropriate for a lecture. As she writes for a feminist-conscious audience, she also seems too ready to condemn the words of the men, although they were often very open-minded for their time, and appreciated the capable, intelligent women to whom they were married. In fact, this book portrays men who actually seem resistant to treating their wives and daughters as inferior beings, to be coddled, perhaps, but not consulted. John Adams frequently asks for his wife’s opinion and allows her to decide whether he should return to the Continental Congress in 1775 (p. 71). The father of Eliza Lucas (later Pinckney) put her in charge of his South Carolina plantation in his absence when she was only sixteen. John Adams writes of Abigail, “I wish some of our great men had such wives…” (p. 101). A Spanish observer writes of John Jay and his wife, Sally, “This woman, whom he loves blindly, dominates him and nothing is done without her consent, so that her opinion prevails” (p. 165). These examples demonstrate that when a man had self-confidence, he saw a capable woman as a partner rather than a threat. One modern attitude which appears frequently in this book is the author’s view toward pregnancies and children. She writes, “Though some women expressed their distress at the repeated pregnancies, it was what women expected, and the men didn’t seem willing to do anything about it.” (p. 176) “Despite the rapid onslaught of babies…” and “…even as she learned domestic gifts from her perpetually pregnant mother...“ (p. 46), “…a houseful of children…” (p. 268). Her assumption is that these trials were something visited on the women by their husbands. While there will always be some women more open to having children than others, (Esther Reed writes after having her second, “I wish I could stop with that number, but I don’t expect that” quoted on p. 120) the author doesn’t seem to understand that many – dare I say “most” – women considered children a blessing rather than a burden. The high rate of infant mortality made the child who lived to adulthood a sweeter blessing. The children were company and a help when their husbands were gone for months or even years at a time. In most cases there was a strong support system of extended family and hired help, which we no longer have. And Roberts seems to forget that at some point these same anonymous infants and toddlers grow into individuals that also have a part in the action, such as our sixth President, John Quincy Adams. Other flaws are in the history itself. Roberts says, for example, that Kitty Greene (the wife of Nathanael Greene) “wanted nothing more than to be with her husband and to flirt with his friends” (p. 92) which implies an omniscience that is not possible. A friend who is an Adams scholar pointed out that the marriage of “Nabby” (Abigail junior) Adams is somewhat romanticized in the telling. Even a little fictionalizing can be dangerous, especially in a book to be read by non-experts who can’t tell the difference. One leitmotif that Roberts picks up on in the role of the “ladies” in starting our country, was that there was an implied mission for the women to “make the men behave.” (The word “behave,” in this instance, has a broader meaning than keeping them faithful. It means to be a civilizing influence.) As a mother, the woman takes the inherent role of forming her sons to have character, morals, and manners. The wives of the generals went to Valley Forge despite the cold and lack of food to boost the spirits of the troops by having at least the semblance of a civilized social life. “The women…gathered in the Washingtons’ little log dining room and encouraged everyone to sing, with the high-spirited Kitty Greene working especially hard to keep up morale.” (p. 95). By her presence, Martha kept her husband George from gossip when he did such things as dance all evening with said Kitty Greene, the wife of one of his generals. The glimpses of the search for an American culture are most interesting. Who knew that Martha Washington was first called “Lady Washington” in imitation of the English? Although George Washington was inaugurated in a plain brown suit, feathers were worn at the first Presidential soirées, unconsciously imitating the Court of St. James in England. At the time of the French Revolution, sympathetic Americans in Philadelphia called themselves “Citizen” and “Citess.” The occasional intrusion of Roberts’ “we know better now, don’t we” attitude is not enough to ruin a wonderful book, which opens a window into a world we should not forget, as women at a time when cultural roles of American women are being redefined. It is good to have heroic women as role models. Their struggles were not so very different: multi-tasking, balancing private (family) and public life, and, of course, “making the men behave.” |
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