Patriotism and Individuality

Abigail Adams kicks ass. Anyone who doesn't know how much ass Mrs. Adams kicks should rapidly acquaint themselves with the woman that was unafraid to give a written smackdown to the President of the United States of America. Twice.

"Emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining absolute power over Wives," she wrote to her husband in 1776, while John Adams was serving in the Continental Congress. "Do not put such unlimited powers into the hands of the husbands, remember all men would be tyrants if they could."

The American Revolution had a peculiar impact on women's roles in the United States. Specifically upon marriage and the expectation of the woman therein.

Prior to the Revolution, family was a model for church and state, each institution had its own hierarchy, with authority residing in the head.[1] The head of the family, church or colonies, was expected to control its members. Indeed, John Winthrop, Massachusetts Bay's governor, explained in 1645 "a true wife accounts her subjection her honor and freedom, and would not think her condition safe and free but in subjection to her husband's authority." The husband retained full control over the wife, and children, family finances, decisions, and was the "conduit through which God's blessings flowed." Absolute subjection of wife to husband was the norm and expectation.

When absolute monarchy fell out of favor in during the English Revolution of 1688, the absolute patriarchy of the domestic sphere was also subject to ideological assault. "If absolute sovereignty be not necessary in a state, how comes it to be so in a family?" asked kick-ass proto-feminist Mary Axtell in 1706.

The Revolution, and the upheaval that accompanied it, shone a light on women's roles as producers of homemade goods (which allowed boycotts of imported goods), and supporters of the cause either via fundraising or direct support. The war further forced women to spring into the arena of public affairs (difficult to avoid if one's town was bombarded).  With the "stress of the first modern revolution" women were "suddenly assumed to be capable of sharing a highly valued and rational political sentiment: patriotism."

The idea that women were capable of sharing the sentiment of patriotism set the stage for women to be considered as individuals within the domestic relationship as well. Thus, as a result the Revolution, the conceptualization of marriage shifted from the authoritarian patriarchal marriage, to what has been termed "companionate marriage," i.e. a marriage based on affection, esteem, friendship, and consent. Some contemporary authors termed this "matrimonial republicanism."

So what's the point?

The seeds of equality for American women were planted as recognition of their contribution to something outside the home. This can be contrasted to the progression of women's rights in other western cultures, in which women's rights and suffrage proceeded as a part of the burgeoning recognition of the rights of man (humans). As such, the individuality of the American woman is in historic context based on her occupying and external, or multiple, roles. Could this be one of the small seeds that had led  to the overextension of the modern American woman?

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[1] Heh heh heh heh…heh heh heh.