Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation

After a protracted engagement, Deborah Read married Benjamin Franklin in 1730. She assisted him with his businesses and other ventures and proved so adept at doing so that she quickly helped him clear his debts and acquire enough money to retire early. Read’s story helps to demonstrate the ways women’s roles were starting to change at this point in history, with some women taking on greater responsibilities, albeit in an indirect way, as they were unable to own property or other interests themselves. Like other such women, Read was still expected to uphold a traditional female role of raising a family, attending to domestic duties, and entertaining Franklin’s guests, who were so numerous that she was “called on constantly to keep what was essentially a salon going in the household” (27). During Franklin’s decades in London serving as a diplomat, Read continued to maintain his business interests and other projects, as well as looking after his family and house, sometimes literally, as when she physically defended his property from a mob of violent protestors who objected to Franklin’s acquiescence to the Stamp Act. 

Read’s activities also highlight the essential, behind-the-scenes contributions women made during this period. Had not helped clear his debts and make his enterprises lucrative, Benjamin would not have been able to retire and enter public and political life, and America may have been robbed of one of its Founding Fathers. Likewise, had Read not toiled so hard to maintain Franklin’s business interests, home, and family, he would not have been at liberty to spend such a long time serving as a diplomat in London, an experience that he seemed to relish far more than she enjoyed remaining in America.

Despite any grievances she may have felt about her responsibilities, or about Franklin’s lack of contact or rumors of his relationships with other women, Read both enjoyed being involved in his businesses and considered her hard work to be her duty. Indeed, it was not until she suffered a stroke in 1769 that she began to complain about how hard her life was and how much she wanted Franklin’s support and assistance. At this point, she began to ask him to return home, a suggestion he roundly ignored, prompting her to cut off contact and tell him, “I can’t write anymore” (36). Read died in 1774, and it was only then that Franklin returned, knowing that he would now have to manage his own affairs. 

Like Deborah Read, Abigail Adams offers a pronounced example of the changing roles of women in colonial America and the vital contribution they made to the struggle for independence. She, too, balanced traditional roles of raising a family and other domestic duties with wider responsibilities, such as running a farm on her own while housing passing refugees and volunteers for the militia and reporting on the conflict and political situation to her husband, John Adams. Without her rising to these immense challenges, John would not have been able to leave and serve his country so effectively.

Even more explicitly than Read, Abigail Adams framed this as a matter of patriotic duty, repeatedly articulating the idea that such sacrifices were the way in which American women could serve their new nation. Even when John, having only recently returned home, was sent on a diplomatic mission to France, she only briefly complained—asking “must I cheerfully comply with the demand of my country?” (102)—before willingly accepting her duty once more.

An ardent advocate for women’s rights, Abigail was acutely aware of the fact that American women were “[d]eprived of a voice in legislation, obliged to submit to those laws which are imposed upon us” (173). The fact that this lack of voice did not “make us indifferent to the public welfare” (173), she argued, only served to highlight the great patriotic contributions women made to the cause. Although John was effusive in his praise for Abigail’s political sense, he was not always convinced about the role of women in political and public life. Abigail chided him about this view, perhaps most famously with her plea that he “remember the ladies” while drawing up new legislation (72). This exchange is often viewed as a light-hearted joke. However, Roberts believes that the surrounding discussion, as well as Abigail’s ongoing advocacy for women’s rights, undermines this interpretation and suggests that Abigail’s comment was a genuine, and somewhat angry, statement on the marginalized position of women in colonial America.

Warren offers one of the most complex and revealing examples of responses to the changing roles of women in colonial America. On the one hand, her actions and choices seemed to reflect a growing acceptance of women taking on greater responsibilities and operating beyond the domestic sphere. She grew up with an unusual amount of male support and encouragement, first from her father, who allowed her to share her brothers’ education, and then from her brothers and husband, who all joined her father in encouraging her to move beyond the restrictions of socially prescribed roles for women. Once her brother retired from political activism, Warren moved even further from the domestic sphere. She became heavily involved as a propagandist, publishing political pamphlets, plays, and poems that attacked the loyalists and British forces and called more passionately than most for independence.

However, this fiercely held republicanism and outspoken attitude seems to clash with Warren’s rather conservative attitude towards women’s roles. Despite encouragement from Abigail Adams and the British republican and proto-feminist Catherine Macaulay, she remained indifferent to women’s political rights to the extent that, surprisingly, “the position of women in pre-Revolutionary times did not seem particularly to interest America’s foremost female writer” (50). Indeed, she insisted that a woman’s place was in the domestic sphere, publishing her works anonymously to avoid seeming to undermine this position and dedicating much of her time to domestic duties and “feminine” activities. She did begin to adapt to changing attitudes, however, eventually taking the bold step of publishing a collection of poetry under her own name; this work would gain endorsements from her old political friends and correspondents including George Washington and John Adams, despite her earlier attacks on the Constitution for not being egalitarian enough for her strict republican standards.