A History of the Wife (25 page)

If, in these early letters, Abigail showed the deference to John that was considered fitting for someone of her age and gender, she was by no means self-effacing, and it is clear that they related to each other with the ease and reciprocity of loving friends. Indeed, the hallmark of their correspondence—a hallmark that became more vivid with time— is the mutuality of their affection and respect for one another. A few

weeks before their wedding, John expressed to Abigail his belief (and one that was typical of the eighteenth century) that she would have a beneficent influence on his character: “You shall polish and refine my sentiments of Life and Manners, banish all the unsocial and ill natured Particles in my Composition, and form me to that happy Temper, that can reconcile a quick Discernment with a perfect Candour” (September 30, 1764).

Perhaps these sentiments strike the reader today as quaintly old- fashioned. Do we still expect spouses to exert a moral influence upon each other? The notion that husband and wife should make each other better people does not resonate with the most visible goals of contem- porary American society. How many young people marry with the con- scious expectation that they will become kinder and wiser by virtue of choosing a decent, generous mate? Happier, richer, more successful. Yes! But better human beings?

Abigail and John’s hopes for one another were completely realized in a partnership that endured for over fifty years. John went on to become a founding father of the new Republic, minister to France and England, vice president to George Washington, and second president of the United States. And Abigail was, without a doubt, “the wife of.” But she was also the woman who survived many years on her own, running the property in Braintree and raising the children without their father when John was away—four years when he was across the ocean, and long months when he was later called to Philadelphia and Washington.

Abigail and John were exceptional human begins, to be sure, yet their story should not be lost on us. For it is a story of lasting love, painful separation, and dogged perseverance. Abigail claimed toward the end of her life that separation from her husband during the Revolu- tionary period had been the greatest of her personal trials. The Revolu- tion had forced her to spend years apart from the one she still called “My protecter, the friend of my youth, my companion and husband of my choice.”
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At the time of her death in 1818, John (who was to live eight more years) eulogized her as “The dear Partner of my Life for fifty four Years as a Wife and for many years more as a Lover.”
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“Lover” in those days could refer to the chaste young woman he courted as well as the woman he married.

Abigail and John represented all that was new and best in eigh- teenth-century marriage. While patriarchal structures still prevailed on

both sides of the Atlantic, a new ideal of companionate marriage was taking root. Imported from the propertied class of England by the colo- nial elite, it would blossom and spread on a fertile shore.
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Compan- ionate marriage meant that one had the right to choose one’s mate in the name of love. It meant that spouses were bound primarily by affec- tion, friendship, respect, shared values, and interests. It implied that the newly formed couple would have a separate identity from that of their parents, and that the “horizontal” relation between husband and wife would supersede the “vertical” relation between parents and chil- dren. As early as the seventeenth century in the Netherlands, and throughout the eighteenth century in England, France, Northern Europe, and America, double portraits of husbands and wives gave graphic substance to this new ideal.

COMPANIONATE MARRIAGE MEETS THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

The Revolution probably hastened the spread of companionate mar- riage in America. While gender hierarchy certainly did not disappear, husbands and wives were expected to share the same political loyalties and to demonstrate many of the same civic virtues. Thus Abigail Adams considered herself no less a patriot than her husband, even if he was the one to act in the public domain and she remained at home. Her exer- tions on the home front to replace her absent husband were seen as necessary sacrifices for the good of the nation.

Before the late 1760s in the American colonies, it was not considered appropriate for women to be privy to political discussions. But as dis- content with the mother country became more and more vociferous, women participated more frequently in the political discourse. The Philadelphia poet Hannah Griffitts expressed the new female con- sciousness in a letter to General Anthony Wayne dated July 13, 1777: “There was a time that I knew nor thought no more of politics than I did of grasping a sceptre but now the scene is changed and I believe every woman is desirous of being acquainted with what interests her country.”
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In 1776, Samuel Adams wrote to his wife, Betsy, the news of recent military and political events, even as he acknowledged that “it has not been usual for me to write to you of War or Politicks.” Four years later he wrote even less defensively: “I see no Reason why a Man

may not communicate his political opinions to his wife, if he pleases.”
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During the Revolutionary years, wives became as active in following the political turmoil as their husbands. They read newspapers and pamphlets, kept informed of military operations, and discussed politics with both women and men. The change in women’s political awareness and participation was, according to historian Mary Beth Norton, “truly

momentous.”
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The women of Boston have left a rich record of their involvement in revolutionary activities.
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Although they could not participate directly in government—they could not hold office or vote in town meetings—they found ways of entering the political arena. During the decade that led up to the Revolution of 1776, they appeared not only as spectators, but also as rioters, boycotters, and military supporters in such historic events as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and the Siege of Boston.

They were crucial to the success of the boycott of imports from Great Britain. As early as 1767, a group of women pledged not to use ribbons and other imported fabrics. In order to make this boycott work, it was necessary for them to produce their own textiles, especially in the cities, where women had become used to buying cloth produced abroad. Spinning bees became a popular form of female patriotism, with the sale of the wool given to charity.

In 1770, collective action coalesced around the boycott of tea. In February of that year, the
Boston Evening Post
reported that “upwards of 300 mistresses of Families, in which Number the Ladies of the highest rank and influence” signed a petition to abstain from buying tea.
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As mistresses of households, married women were able to put consumerist pressure on the British several years before the Boston Tea Party of December 1773, when their menfolk boarded three English ships and dumped chests of tea into the harbor.

In the wake of the Boston Tea Party, when the British closed the port of Boston and established military rule, women joined the men in defy- ing the enemy. Housewives were part of the crowds that prevented British soldiers from carrying out certain operations, such as searching for hidden arms. And when war broke out in nearby Lexington in April 1775, and Boston became a city under siege, patriot women and their families left Boston en masse, leaving behind the loyalists.

The women forced to abandon Boston in the spring of 1775 found support throughout Massachusetts among other patriot women. Abi-

gail Adams did her best to aid the refugees who swarmed through Braintree, and her literary friend, Mercy Otis Warren, sent out letters, poems, and plays from her home in Plymouth, encouraging other women to think and act as patriots.

If Boston was the first city to arouse a new female political con- sciousness, it was by no means the last. Wives in Connecticut, for example, confronted merchants suspected of hoarding items in order to drive up their price. In one instance, a crowd of twenty-two women in East Hartford demanded entry into a merchant’s home, discovered a cache of sugar, and, with their own scales, weighed the sugar and paid what they deemed a fair price—much less than the four dollars a pound suggested by the merchant’s wife.

Consider also the women of Philadelphia. In 1780, they went so far as to found an all-women’s organization destined to help the war effort. A broadside composed by Esther deBerdt Reed proposed that patriotic women renounce extravagant clothing and ornaments and donate the money they saved to the revolutionary troops. Her pro- posal, known as “the offering of the Ladies,” met with immediate suc- cess. Within three days, a group of thirty-six Philadelphia women suggested that other women throughout the colonies organize, county by county under the leadership of the wife of each state governor, and send their offerings to Martha Washington for distribution among the troops. While the positions of honor were assigned to the wives of male officials, contributions were to be solicited by and from all women.

The Philadelphia organizers divided their city into ten districts to be canvassed by pairs of women. Some of the noted canvassers were Sally McKean, wife of the Pennsylvania chief justice; Julia Stockton Rush, wife of Benjamin Rush; and Mrs. Robert Morris (Rush and Morris were both signers of the Declaration of Independence). These ladies did not think it beneath them to solicit contributions from females of all sta- tions, including servants. Within a month, they had collected $300,000 Continental dollars (an inflated sum worth about $7,500 in coin money) from over 1,600 persons.

That same month newspapers throughout the country reprinted Esther Reed’s original proposal. The women of New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia joined the Ladies’ Association and organized similar cam- paigns, raising enough money to purchase sufficient linen and make

over two thousand shirts for the soldiers. With General Washington’s public praise for this show of “female patriotism,” many wives began to feel that they, too, were partners in the war effort.

Wives whose husbands were loyalists had less exhilarating experi- ences. They found themselves under attack from their patriot neigh- bors, often verbally and even physically. In 1775, when a Massachusetts wife expressed her politics by naming her newborn son in honor of a British commander, a crowd of women attacked her house, stopping short of tarring and feathering both mother and child. Disruptions in friendships were inevitable, as wives lined up on either side of the rev- olutionary divide. Even some marriages were riven by conflicting polit- ical views. Elizabeth Graeme, a wealthy Philadelphian, split with her Scottish husband, Henry Fergusson—which did not prevent the gov- ernment of Pennsylvania from confiscating her property because of
his
loyalty to the Crown.

Another socially prominent loyalist wife, Grace Growden Galloway, remained in Philadelphia after the departure of her husband and daughter for British-occupied New York. Seeking to separate her fate from that of her husband and to protect the legacy inherited from her wealthy father so as to pass it on to her daughter, she took on the legal system—but to no avail. Ultimately she lost her Philadelphia mansion and all the other family holdings, and died in 1781, embittered by the discovery that the deed to her father’s property carried only her hus- band’s name.
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Some loyalist wives actively supported the British war effort. They carried letters through the lines to the redcoats, served as spies, and aided British prisoners. But most, it appears, merely tried to survive and keep their families alive. Like their patriot counterparts, most loy- alist wives and mothers put their families first. They would have agreed with the position of Helena Kortwright Brasher, who, despite her revo- lutionary sentiments, condemned her husband’s words: “My country first and then my family.”
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REPUBLICANS AND ROYALISTS: THE VIEW FROM FRANCE

A decade after the American Revolution, it was the turn of the French to experience their own bloody upheaval. The conflict pitted

republicans against royalists, the underclass against the affluent, the “people” against the nobility. Wives from both sides of the political spectrum, but especially aristocrats, saw their husbands lose their heads at the guillotine, and sometimes lost their own heads as well. The foreign wars in defense of the Revolution also took their toll of men, leaving behind thousands of families headed by widows.

Before the Revolution, wives from the upper echelons of society (the “haute bourgeoisie” and the nobility) led lives that were relatively sepa- rate from the lives of their husbands. With marriages arranged on the basis of money, rank, and family name, spouses were not expected to share an intimate rapport and common interests. Indeed, it was not considered chic for aristocratic husbands and wives to appear too attached to one another. If a married man was of an amorous disposi- tion (and what self-respecting Frenchman was not!), he would establish a liaison outside the marriage. His wife, too, if she were so inclined and her husband willing to look the other way, could take a lover without fear of disgrace.

A small number of upper-class wives devoted themselves to cultural and intellectual pursuits. Most of the literary salons were run by mar- ried women, with or without the attendance of their husbands. Among the best-known female luminaries, Madame du Châtelet, the translator of Newton, was considered the equal of the great scholars of her day, and Madame d’Épinay was also a learned lady known for her pedagog- ical writing. It is true that these two “wives” were associated more with their famous lovers—Voltaire and Grimm, respectively—than with their husbands, which says tomes about the differences in French and American society.

Later in the century, in the period leading up to the Revolution, some wives collaborated extensively in their husbands’ careers, for example, Madame Condorcet, Madame Roland, and Madame Lavoisier. In the famous portrait of Monsieur and Madame Antoine Lavoisier painted by Jacques David in 1788, Lavoisier the chemist sits at his desk, his hand poised with a pen and his eyes staring up at the beauti- ful face of his wife, Anne, while she stares out of the frame at the viewer. This quite remarkable painting contrasts with many other representa- tions of married couples, where the wife stares adoringly at her hus- band and the husband looks away into the public world. The Lavoisier double portrait speaks for the new ideal of companionate marriage,