Abigail Adams Letter To Her Husband Analysis

This letter is a fine example of Abigail Adams' strong feminist and strong federalist views. These letters represented the turmoil felt by women during the uncertain times facing the colonies. The views of Abigail Adams became the first in a long line of cries out for women's equality.

Adams recognized the limited role women were allowed to play in the world at that time. However, she insisted that a woman's role carried an equal amount of importance and responsibility to a man's. She believed that

With the marriage to John Adams, Abigail gained more than just a family and a husband she gained a greater independence for herself and for the women in the colonies. John Adams was a political man and devoted his life to politics. Abigail spent majority of her married years alone and raising a family by herself, with the help of family and servants. It was during these years that Abigail started writing a tremendous amount of letters. She wrote to family and friends but most importantly to her husband John. In the letters to her husband she was able to express her feelings about situations that were happening in the family and colonies. She wrote encouraging words that helped him through troubled times in politics. With the absence of her husband during her second pregnancy,

Abigail adams was born in massaichusets in 1744, When she was 19 she married John Adams a member of the first contintental congres. John Adams currently left to go fight in the war leaving Abigail alone with 4 kids, she cooked, cleaned, and worked on their faimly farm. Abigail Adams was self educated, and she studdied french. She belived all women should have equal writes with men. Recently Abigail has been wrighting letters to her husban about how woman needed equal wrights as men, most of the letters where disgarded but some where kept. Is there a chance that women may get equal writes with men? Keep reading The Daily Update News for more information on this great story about freedom.

Abigail Adams wanted to make clear that women were just as important as men at this time, and a huge part in winning the

She feels it is wrought with sexuality and temptation, not only in the media but in the clothing choices of Americans. She finds the media images of women very offensive because of their lack of clothing and sexual suggestions. She believes that this objectification of women is immoral in all senses, and criticizes the media for such actions. What upsets her even further, is that regular American women dress and act in a similar manner to these media portrayals. She believes that women should not parade their bodies around as such. When other women expose themselves, she herself feels exposed. Her and these women all have a female body under their clothing, so when women dress in a revealing way, men can easily imagine what they look like naked. This makes Abigail feel that men can thus imagine her body as well. She worries that they may feel prompted to have inappropriate thoughts about her if this idea is brought to their attention. How then also will women expect to be given any respect or to have a proper family? I interpreted Abigail’s words to be similar to Katz’s view that “If she is normally developed…her sexual desire is small. If this were not the case, the whole world would become a brothel and marriage and a family impossible.” (31). When women dress so promiscuously, they seem to create a sexual environment that would make legitimate marriage impossible. This, in Abigail’s view, is occurring in America now, as the majority of relationships involve pre-marital sex and divorce rates are increasing. Women must be modest to keep order in the world. This idea makes it clear that women are valued for their ability to provide sex. It seems, women can mainly gain respect by withholding the one thing men want, and if they give that up, then they are useless to men and

Abigail even went so far as to ambiguously threaten her husband and the social order of the day by stating that if care and attention are not paid to ladies, they would rebel and would not consider their selves bound to obey laws in which they have no representation. This statement was eerily similar to the declaration that Mr. Adams wrote in the declaration against England. In defiance to his wife’s request, Adams, underscored “all men are created equal.”

Starting from Abgail’s letter to John Adams in regards to women’s right, it can be seen that as a wife, their roles were limited within society. Abgail composed a letter to John Adam stating,

In the letter Adams responds to her new surrounding by writing to her daughter about every little detail she can see. This is because her daughter isn't with her so she has to write everything down to send to her in a letter. A question that I had was why wasn't her daughter with her in the first place? Was there a reason the family didn't just come to Washington D.C. all together? Something that was weird for me was Adams tells her daughter that she has to keep everything she was just told a secret from everybody. I thought this was weird because why would Adams not want her daughter telling everyone about the White House and things about it and about Maryland and Virginia? Another thing Adams tells her daughter is she talks about the views

This gave little to no power to the wife or children of the family. According to Mintz and Kellogg, “Patriarchal authority in the Puritan family ultimately rested on the father’s control of landed property or craft skills” (61). This shows that the family relied greatly on what the father offered and gave the family, instead of what each person had to offer. The only way for women to have any power was to be unwed, or be a widow. According to Mintz and Kellogg, “The experience of widowhood did give a small number of colonial women a taste of economic independence” (65). This shows that women were pretty much property in relation to their husband. From the textbook, “Almost every adult man could speak out and vote in town meetings, but all women – even church members – were prohibited from voting” (85). This shows that only men could make laws and had any say in what went on in the community. According to Mintz and Kellogg, “Customarily it was the father, as head of the household, who represented his family at the poll” (59). Again, this quote shows the power that men had in the Puritan society. All of the above quotes do not show any real independence or equality for the women of the Puritan community, but instead, show the dominance of being a godly man. Once a woman become married, she became practically property to the man she had wed. This inequality gave enormous power to the

Women and men have always been depicted as socially, physically, and overall different; men are superior and women inferior. In both “Letters” by John and Abigail Adams and “I Want A Wife” by Judy Brady, women are belittled and thought of to be of very little importance. John makes it sound like the county and its needs are more important than his wife Abigail. Brady talks about how a woman, a wife is thought of by their spouse or husband; that they are easily replaceable. “It is very true, as you observe they have been duped by Dunmore.

During the colonial period women were subordinate to men, the wife’s chief duty was to obey her husband. Women must accept this as law. In southern colonies, husbands often denounced

Men have a strong power over a women. In the 1800’s women were property of men, their sole purpose

She mentions male collegues' appreciation for their wives, using a powerful contrasting simile to describe the women as "tender as a mother nutsing their newly born, brave as a lioness defending their young." She again makes a point of the effects these women could have in regards to the well-being of the world if they had the power to do so. Besides some male leader's intollerance of the peaceful power possessed by women, I personally can not imagine many male leaders who would actually be proud of a woman replacing them. This painful truth puts into perspective not only leaders of the past I can recall, but the power and authority possessors of today, the ones that shape mine- our- way of life.

In chapter III of The Subjection of Women, John Stewart Mill contends with the claims that women are unfit to hold public office, due to their mental weakness, nervous energy, and their inability to focus on singular problems. He also refutes the claim that women are inherently unequal because they have not had the same successes as men in various fields. In Chapter IV, Mill lays out his arguments for why granting women more freedom would be beneficial in that it would increase utility. He begins by asserting that child rearing, in his time, bolsters injustice, and has a negative impact on the character of men. He then argues that women’s equality would double the mental faculties of society. He further argues that women who are uneducated have a bad influence upon men, and that increasing women’s liberty would have a better impact on society as a whole. Finally, he argues that further gender equality would allow women to understand when sacrifices need be made for the betterment of society. Mill’s arguments are sound, however he misses opportunities to strengthen his claims. This essay concludes with some additional arguments that Mill could have added to increase the effectiveness of his arguments.