A History of the Wife (24 page)

gender.
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The only arena where a women was expected to shine was within the home, which was considered her “natural” domain. Here a wife could take pride in her efficient management of a household that still depended largely on homemade goods. The middle-class woman with one or two servants still produced most of the family food from the adjacent farm, vegetable garden, and dairy; she still worked at the spin-

ning wheel and the loom, even if city women were increasingly able to purchase ready-made cloth; and most wives still made clothes for all the members of the household, including the servants, though more affluent women were able to hire the services of a seamstress. If freed from certain basic demands of housewifery, some privileged women turned to more artistic forms of creation: bed rugs and curtains embroi- dered in intricate crewel patterns, or lace caps and sleeve ruffings. Heaven forbid their fingers should be idle, since as one moralist put it, “Idle afternoons . . . make bad wives.”
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When we see these beautiful artifacts of the American past in museums and special collections, we do well to remember that only a sprinkling of women had the leisure to follow their creative bent.

Northern urban women with means rose before eight, spent their mornings in housework, dined around two, and visited friends or pur- sued some form of leisure, such as riding, reading, or music, in the afternoon.
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Well-to-do women in the South also divided their time between housewifery and entertainment. All the southern colonies had a reputation for hospitality, and it was not uncommon for friends and relatives to descend unannounced upon a city or rural matron, expect- ing food and lodging.
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But most wives of the middling and poorer sort were never free from an endless round of drudgery. Without the means to hire servants, even at the relatively low rates found in cities, these wives—who may them- selves have served terms as maids, cooks, or laundresses before their marriages—merely continued the life-sustaining work that had always devolved upon women. A good number of wives assisted in their hus- bands’ trades and crafts, and often took over the business if they became widows. In rural areas, work was incessant, since one had to produce everything oneself, without the nearby markets and stores that made life easier for city women.

Wives who moved with their husbands to sparsely settled communi- ties in search of land and greater opportunity often found themselves isolated and lonely. A judge on circuit in North Carolina in 1778 wrote to his wife that he had stopped at the home of a married couple, who lived so far from everyone that the young wife did not have a single woman she could associate with nearer than eighteen miles away.
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Many of these frontier women wrote home to their relatives, venting their dissatisfactions and deploring the hardships they had to bear,

though others thrived in adverse situations, just as some of their immi- grant ancestors had done before them.

Until recently, many historians tended to idealize the lives of colonial women in comparison with their twentieth-century descendants. How could wives today complain about the pains of childbirth and child- rearing, when they have only two or three offspring as compared with the brood of six or eight that was common in the past? How could they, with their electric ovens and washing machines, bemoan the demands of housework, when their American ancestors made everything from scratch, including the soap? Those “noncomplaining” women, noted for their industry and piety, were held up as models to “decadent” mod- ern women, much as Roman women of the republic were glorified dur- ing the empire.

But neither the imperial Romans nor hagiographic American histori- ans bothered to ask what those “exemplary” women of the past might have thought of their own situations. They never asked whether those women were happy. It is one thing to judge a society by its public face on the friezes of temples or the pages of government documents, all created by men; it is quite another to look at the expressions of women’s subjective experiences in their poems, letters, diaries, and memoirs, or wherever else one can find them.

One indication that eighteenth-century American women were not always so exemplary can be found in the newspaper announcements placed by husbands, stating that a wife had “eloped from his bed and board” or “clandestinely left his home.”
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Alongside notices of stray horses, fugitive slaves, and runaway servants, these announcements testify to domestic friction at every level of society. Why did a husband place such a notice? Ostensibly, he wanted to absolve himself of any debts that his wife might incur, but it was often obvious that he prima- rily wanted to expose her to public shame. Subscribers placing adver- tisements might accuse a departing wife of carrying off valuables that did not legally belong to her, such as silver plate, money, or jewelry, or she might be charged with flagrant infidelity, as in the following:

CATHERINE TREEN, the wife of the subscriber, having, in violation of her solemn vow, behaved herself in the most disgraceful manner, by leaving her own place of abode, and living in a criminal state with a certain William Collins, a plaisterer, under whose bed she was last

night, discovered, endeavoring to conceal herself, her much injured hus- band, therefore, in justice to himself, thinks it absolutely necessary to forewarn all persons from trusting her on his account, being deter- mined, after such flagrant proof of her prostitution, to pay no debts of her contracting.
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Occasionally, a wife fought back and defended her conduct, as in this announcement placed by Sarah Cantwell:

John Cantwell has the impudence to advertise me in the Papers, cau- tioning all Persons against crediting me; he never had any Credit till he married me: As for his Bed and Board mention’d, he had neither Bed nor Board when he married me; I never eloped, I went away before his Face when he beat me.
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The untold story behind any one of these announcements could be the starting point for a wildly imaginative novel.

ABIGAIL ADAMS, WIFE AND PATRIOT

The history of Abigail Adams, wife of the second president of the United States, John Adams, is perhaps the one known example of eigh- teenth-century wifehood that lives up to the ideal. Her treasure-trove of letters evoke what her biographer, Edith Gelles, has called, an “exem- plary wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend, and patriot of early Amer- ica.”
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Yet her life story, however unique, also contains many common features shared by colonial women in general.

One of Abigail’s best-known remarks touched upon the future of marriage. When she wrote to her husband, then a member of the 1776 committee drafting the Declaration of Independence, to “Remember the Ladies,” she had in mind the one-sided relationship between spouses. The letter continues: “Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.” Then she suggested a new mode of marital interaction, one in which men such as her husband would “willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend.” And she closed with a heartfelt plea for the promotion of female happiness: “Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection

and in immitation of the Supreem Being make use of that power only for our happiness.”
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While “happiness” had not yet become the major criterion for judg- ing a life that it has become in our own era, it was beginning to enter the vocabulary of self-assessment, edging out such terms as “piety” and “virtue.” It entered the Declaration of Independence in the revolution- ary statement that all men (sic) were entitled to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” an entitlement that quickly took root in the female, as well as the male, psyche. Abigail’s conception of happiness was inextricably linked to the long-standing biblical belief that a man’s protection of his wife was divinely ordained, and mirrored the domin- ion of God over his people. What was radical, however, was the notion that the happiness of women, as a distinct group, had to be protected by the laws of the land. Without specific laws restricting the power of men over their wives, some husbands would continue to generate mar- ital discord and cause female misery with impunity.

Surely Abigail’s sudden outburst of bold ideas and inflammatory rhet- oric were inspired by the general revolutionary discourse of the times. An analogy between the “tyrant” British king, whose American subjects were clamoring for political voice, and the “tyrant” husband long accus- tomed to abusing his voiceless wife is made explicit in one playful sen- tence: “If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.”
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John’s response to Abigail was patronizing and dismissive. “As to your extraordinary Code of Laws, I cannot but laugh.” Acknowledging the ripple effect of the cry for independence among various groups, such as children, apprentices, Indians, and Negroes, he saw in her let- ter “the first Intimation that another Tribe more numerous and power- full than all the rest were grown discontented.” Then falling back on a well-worn justification for male dominance, he assured her that “the Despotism of the peticoat” was every bit the match for “the Name of Masters” that husbands enjoyed.
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So much for serious attention to Abigail’s proposal.

In the opinion of Edith Gelles, it was “remarkable in early American history” for a woman to make such a critique of masculine power.
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Like the Englishwoman Mary Wollstonecraft sixteen years later in her
Vindication of the Rights of Woman,
written during the turmoil of the

French Revolution, Abigail argued that women, too, should benefit from the democratic aspirations of a fledgling nation. And if, unlike Wollstonecraft, Abigail’s plea was a private one, she had every reason to believe she could exert some influence on public policy through the intermediary of her husband.

Despite John’s cavalier treatment of his wife’s request, he was indeed more “friend” than “master” in their private relationship. Abigail consis- tently addressed him as “Dearest Friend” in the thousands of letters written during the years of his absence from Massachusetts, where she continued to reside while he was away on national business in Philadel- phia, New York, Washington, Paris, and England. It was she who took over the direction of their property in Braintree, Massachusetts, exercis- ing the administrative and legal responsibilities that were usually the purview of men. In this respect, Abigail Adams was not unique during the Revolutionary period. Many wives were called upon to assume the role of “deputy husband” when their spouses went off to fight in the Continental army or in the militia. They had to make business and fam- ily decisions that previously would have been made by the menfolk. They had to confront on their own the dangers of enemy troops, and sometimes endure the horrors of warfare—homes destroyed over their heads, children lost in the havoc, physical injury and rape. Sometimes they had to quarter either enemy or patriot soldiers in their homes, with all the disruption such uninvited guests entailed. They had to negotiate food shortages, forced moves, and grave family illnesses caused by dysentery and smallpox. Yes, these women often had to be resilient and brave just to stay alive.

Few had the resources at their disposal that Abigail Smith Adams enjoyed. In the first place, she came from a well-to-do family. Her father, the Reverend William Smith, was established in Weymouth, Massachusetts, and her mother was a member of the highly respected Quincy clan. Like most other New England girls from this period, Abi- gail did not have a formal education, as did the boys of her social class, but she did have access to her father’s large library. She was fifteen when she met John Adams in 1759; he was twenty-three, a graduate of Har- vard, and a lawyer in the village of Braintree.

The surviving letters documenting their courtship give little trace of the future president of the United States known for his severity and fre- quent ill humor. He is playful and affectionate, addressing Abigail as

“Miss Adorable” and requesting “as many Kisses, and as many Hours of your Company after 9 O’Clock as he shall please to Demand” (October 4, 1762). She addresses him as “My Friend” and signs “Diana” (August 11, 1763) following the popular mode of adopting a pen name from ancient history or classical mythology. Later she will settle on the name of “Portia,” doubly inspired by the virtuous Roman matron and the nimble-minded jurist in
The Merchant of Venice.

Formally recognized as Abigail’s future husband in 1763, John wrote tenderly to “the dear Partner of all my Joys and sorrows” and expressed the hope that he would soon “be bound to your Ladyship in the soft Ligaments of Matrimony” (April, 1764). Abigail’s letters to him are somewhat more subdued concerning her romantic sentiments, though she is characteristically spontaneous, as in the letter of April 12, 1764, that begins: “My Dearest Friend, Here am I all alone, in my Chamber, a mere Nun I assure you.” There is often an undertone of reverence for the superior male, her senior by eight years, that some- times borders on the obsequious. “E’er long May I be connected with a Friend from whose Example I may form a more faultless conduct, and whose benevolent mind will lead him to pardon, what he cannot amend.”

John continues with expressions of praise for Abigail and the mem- bers of her sex noted for their “Kindness,” “softness,” and “Tenderness” (April 14, 1764). He also playfully makes a catalog of Abigail’s defects (May 7, 1764). The charming list includes an indifference to playing cards and learning to sing, “Walking, with the Toes bending inward,” “sitting with the Leggs across,” and hanging her head “like a Bulrush.” Though Abigail received this list “with as much pleasure, as an other person would have read their perfections,” she did take exception to his comment on her legs: “I think that a gentleman has no business to con- cern himself about the Leggs of a Lady” (May 9, 1764). We have not yet arrived at the Victorian era when human legs were referred to as limbs and the prudish hid even their piano legs with coverlets.