The primary points of the letters from Abigail Adams to her husband John reveal that, in all likelihood, the country elected the wrong half of this letter-writing duo as the country’s second President. The intellect of Abigail in recognizing that the historical subjugation of women incontrovertibly points to a tendency toward a tyrannical nature in the dominance of the male is one of the few points she dares to address outright, though naturally she masterfully couches the sting of the truth within the softness of her ladylike persuasion:
“That your sex are naturally tyrannical is a truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute; but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of master for the more tender and endearing one of friend.”
Abigail’s masterful stroke of undermining John’s central thesis by pointing out the despotism of those who control the right to education (and, more importantly, control of the right to withhold education) reveal an unerring judgment of character sorely lacking in the writings of her husband. Though softened, Abigail’s insight into the basic authoritarian nature of patriarchy contains the ring of truth in comparison to the ring of the humor that belies any authenticity in the reply from her husband:
“We have only the name of masters, and rather than give up this, which would completely subject us to the despotism of the petticoat.”
“The despotism of the petticoat” is a memorable phrase, true enough, but the metonymic indulgence of the reference to underwear reveals better than anything John’s inherent condescension toward what is manifestly an issue of so great an importance to Abigail that she dare not address it in stark terms, but must instead use all her considerable power of persuasion to subtly connect her husband’s fiery passion toward independence from England to her own passion for greater dependence for women.
That a man so bereft of the basic intuitive belief in equality could be not just capable of holding the belief, but actually putting into writing a statement affirming the belief that only men who own property possess any sound judgment should come as no surprise when that same man revealed the true depth his own judgment in supporting the Alien and Sedition Rights once elected President. The point of the letters on a textual level are directed toward showing that the march toward equal rights for women in the United States was commencing even before there was a United States. It is on the subtextual level that the letters reveal their most fascinating aspect, however: without Abigail behind him, the letters of John Adams would probably not have been read by anyone outside the line of his family because it is impossible to imagine the mind behind the words in those letters ever having the opportunity to square off against such greater competing minds of the era from Jefferson to Paine to Franklin to Hamilton.
Without question, the letters offer tremendous insight into the state of mind of that era. That women were not granted equal rights at the dawn of a new country daring to declare its existence a bold new experiment in equal and inalienable rights unquestionably serves to let the more unrefined idiocy displayed by John Adams slightly off the hook; Jefferson and Franklin and Hamilton certainly revealed no more intellectual capacity to view women as any more deserving than Adams. What is especially fascinating, however, is the confirmation that then—as now—the real divide in America relative to who gets opportunities and who is denied them has less to do with sex or gender or even race than with economic position.
John Adams notoriously argued that voting should be limited not just to men, but only men who owned property and this is tantamount to suggesting that to lack ownership of property it to lack the right to have a voice deserving of being heard in literally every aspect of one’s life. By definition this view effectively bans women from voting since women could not own property; a state of affairs which also conveniently dislodges men from attacks of misogyny since men who owned no property were in exactly the same situation. The great irony that pervades the correspondence then becomes the fact that though Adams is working tirelessly to create a new form of democratic government resisting the tyranny of the Crown, that government will be still be enforcing exactly the same despotic rule over the rights of the women. This irony is then compounded by the fact that John’s closest confidante and advisor on matters both domestic and political turns out to be… a woman educated at least well enough to match her husband in a mastery of the written English language. And why would Abigail demonstrate what is actually an advanced mastery of the language over her husband? Because she hailed from an economically advantaged position over others.
These letters serve only to demonstrate that from a time even before it was officially founded, the population of the United States was divided along economic lines to a far greater extent that it has ever been divided along any other lines. Those who already belong to the haves will always enjoy a natural advantage over the have-nots and this is not just the case now, not just the case a hundred years from now, but the case more than two-hundred years ago. In reading the letters from Abigail to John, one cannot help but imagine that had she become President rather than her husband, perhaps at least some small measure of progress might have commenced much earlier.
