First Lady of Letters
First Lady of Letters: Judith Sargent Murray and the Struggle for Female Independence
Sheila L. Skemp
Series: Early American Studies
Copyright Date: 2009
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Pages: 512
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fh8t8
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First Lady of Letters
Book Description:

Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820), poet, essayist, playwright, and one of the most thoroughgoing advocates of women's rights in early America, was as well known in her own day as Abigail Adams or Martha Washington. Her name, though, has virtually disappeared from the public consciousness. Thanks to the recent discovery of Murray's papers-including some 2,500 personal letters-historian Sheila L. Skemp has documented the compelling story of this talented and most unusual eighteenth-century woman. Born in Gloucester, Massachussetts, Murray moved to Boston in 1793 with her second husband, Universalist minister John Murray. There she became part of the city's literary scene. Two of her plays were performed at Federal Street Theater, making her the first American woman to have a play produced in Boston. There as well she wrote and published her magnum opus, The Gleaner, a three-volume "miscellany" that included poems, essays, and the novel-like story "Margaretta." After 1800, Murray's output diminished and her hopes for literary renown faded. Suffering from the backlash against women's rights that had begun to permeate American society, struggling with economic difficulties, and concerned about providing the best possible education for her daughter, she devoted little time to writing. But while her efforts diminished, they never ceased. Murray was determined to transcend the boundaries that limited women of her era and worked tirelessly to have women granted the same right to the "pursuit of happiness" immortalized in the Declaration of Independence. She questioned the meaning of gender itself, emphasizing the human qualities men and women shared, arguing that the apparent distinctions were the consequence of nurture, not nature. Although she was disappointed in the results of her efforts, Murray nevertheless left a rich intellectual and literary legacy, in which she challenged the new nation to fulfill its promise of equality to all citizens.

eISBN: 978-0-8122-0352-3
Subjects: History
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-vi)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. vii-viii)
  3. Preface
    Preface (pp. ix-xvi)
  4. Part I. Rebellions:: 1769–1784
    • [Part I. Introduction]
      [Part I. Introduction] (pp. 1-8)

      In 1779, Judith Stevens composed a long essay entitled “The Sexes,” and tucked it away in a collection of writings that she dubbed her “Repository.” The piece was an exposition of her maturing views concerning gender relations, views about which she had been thinking for many years. As early as 1777, Judith had proclaimed her belief that women’s presumed intellectual inferiority was the product of nurture. “Education,” she had insisted, “not Nature renders us Cowards.”¹ That same year, she wrote a piece on “Curiosity.” In it she admitted that most people saw women’s inquisitive nature as a negative quality, even...

    • Chapter 1 “This Remote Spot”
      Chapter 1 “This Remote Spot” (pp. 9-40)

      “Gloucester possesses for me superior charms—My warmest affections hover round the asylum of my youth—There resideth the indulgently venerable forms of my tender, and even honoured Parents…. In that spot rests the ashes of my Ancestors.” When Judith Sargent Murray wrote these words in 1790, she planned to live—and die—in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Whenever she wandered through the Sargent family plot, reading the names on the tombstones that marked the lives and deaths of her kinsmen, gazing at “a long line of ancestors marshalled in solemn order,” she was comforted by her deep ties to her New...

    • Chapter 2 Universal Salvation
      Chapter 2 Universal Salvation (pp. 41-66)

      On February 11, 1777, the deacons of Gloucester’s First Parish Church sent letters to sixteen “delinquent members” of their congregation. Why, they wanted to know, had these once stalwart pillars of church and community chosen to absent themselves from “the worship and ordinances of God in his House?” Among the recipients of the letters were Epes Sargent “and wife,” Winthrop Sargent “and wife,” and Judith Stevens.¹ The deacons were understandably perplexed. Even in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, religion remained central to the identity of most New Englanders. Whenever communicants signed a church’s covenant or attended weekly services...

    • Chapter 3 Independence
      Chapter 3 Independence (pp. 67-93)

      From the perspective of Universalism’s detractors, John Murray could not have arrived in America at a worse time. Even as Gloucester’s religious establishment was trying to avoid a split in the First Parish Church, the town was facing the very real possibility that the colonies would soon declare their independence from England. The divisions in the First Parish Church would have occurred with or without the colonists’ quarrel with the mother country, but they surely contributed to Gloucester’s anxiety as America edged toward independence. Add to that the downturn in the seaport’s economic fortunes, and the town’s residents had every...

    • Chapter 4 Creating a Genteel Nation
      Chapter 4 Creating a Genteel Nation (pp. 94-122)

      No one welcomed the end of the war with a greater sense of relief than Judith Stevens. Even before hostilities entirely ceased, her family’s fortunes were improving. John’s financial position was more secure in the last years of the conflict, and she had no reason to suspect that peace would destroy what war had wrought. Despite her occasional bouts of despair and intermittent illness, Judith found the last years of the Revolutionary War surprisingly productive.¹ Women as a whole may have benefited only marginally if at all by America’s independence, but as an individual, Judith had reason to believe that...

  5. Part II. Republic of Letters:: 1783–1798
    • [Part II. Introduction]
      [Part II. Introduction] (pp. 123-128)

      Judith Stevens declared that she had crossed the Rubicon when she published her Universalist catechism in 1782. Still she waited two years before she published anything else. Even after the war between England and its former colonies ended, Judith had a great deal to occupy her. Not only did she—at long last—have a house to run and two orphans to educate, but she was increasingly distracted by the painful realization that her husband’s wartime success as a merchant had been only temporary. Moreover, while she continued to scribble away throughout the war years and thereafter, writing reams of...

    • Chapter 5 “Sweet Peace”
      Chapter 5 “Sweet Peace” (pp. 129-158)

      Judith Stevens had eagerly anticipated the end of the war between England and America, assuming that with “sweet peace,” the anxieties and turmoil that she had intermittently suffered throughout the long struggle for independence would soon be little more than a faint and unpleasant memory. She took it for granted that the new nation would not alter the stable and hierarchical order that buttressed her own social position. She believed that the new government would eagerly welcome the best men in the country to the corridors of power, allowing men like her brother Winthrop to take their rightful place in...

    • Chapter 6 A Belle Passion
      Chapter 6 A Belle Passion (pp. 159-186)

      On March 21, 1788, Judith Stevens wrote to Maria Sargent. “Fitz William is gone,” she said. “Every one I love is gone, or going, and this place is already sufficiently desolate.” For Judith these were trying times, as she struggled to find her footing in a world that seemed to be terribly off-kilter. Nothing was as it should be. Her husband was dead. Her finances were a shambles. She was responsible for the welfare of two female orphans whose prospects seemed even bleaker than her own. Her parents were getting older and more feeble. Esther was preoccupied with her children...

    • Chapter 7 A Wider World
      Chapter 7 A Wider World (pp. 187-212)

      Judith Sargent Murray approached the last decade of the eighteenth century with mixed emotions. Still estranged from Winthrop and continuing to mourn the death of her son, she had much to regret. Nevertheless, she was grateful for a great deal. Her marriage to John Murray remained her truest happiness. Her parents, although they were growing older and more feeble, were still alive and remained a source of emotional support. On a grander scale, she was supremely confident of America’s prospects. The nation had gotten off to an inauspicious start, but by the fall of 1789, a new Constitution had put...

    • [Illustrations]
      [Illustrations] (pp. None)
    • Chapter 8 A Career of Fame
      Chapter 8 A Career of Fame (pp. 213-233)

      In the heady days immediately following the Revolution, anything had seemed possible. As they saw homages to equality floating in the air, women like Judith Sargent Murray had reason to hope that the new nation would welcome a social order based on merit rather than birth. If that happened, elite women would be able to compete on an equal basis with their male counterparts, receiving an education that would enable them to soar to the loftiest heights. If, however, growing numbers of men—and women—sought to discourage women from even attempting to fly, then Judith felt obliged to resist....

    • Chapter 9 “A School of Virtue”
      Chapter 9 “A School of Virtue” (pp. 234-266)

      By the spring of 1794, Judith was eager to move to Boston. Her parents were entombed alongside all the other Sargents who had lived and died in Gloucester. The town was almost deserted.¹ Boston promised a better life. John was serving one of the nation’s largest and most important Universalist congregations. In time, Julia Maria would enjoy educational opportunities that were far superior to anything Gloucester offered. The political and literary ambiance of the capital city was vibrant, and Judith’s intellectual horizons would be broadened there. Fresh from the modest success of her “Gleaner” and “Repository” essays, she hoped that...

    • Chapter 10 Federalist Muse
      Chapter 10 Federalist Muse (pp. 267-298)

      There was a time when Judith Sargent Murray’s fame—such as it was—derived almost completely from The Gleaner, her three-volume “miscellany” published in 1798. Scholars throughout most of the twentieth century believed that Judith’s precious letter books were not only illegible, but that they had also disappeared from view. A few historians were impressed by her entries in the Massachusetts Magazine or the Gentleman and Lady’s Town and Country Magazine, duly observing that their author must have been an extraordinary woman who, more than most of her American contemporaries, demanded intellectual equality for “the sex.” Focusing on The Gleaner’s...

  6. Part III. Retreat:: 1798–1820
    • [Part III. Introduction]
      [Part III. Introduction] (pp. 299-308)

      Like other New England Federalists, Judith was disenchanted with the egalitarian message that emanated from the pens of so many unworthy and misguided Americans at the end of the eighteenth century. She began to despair of a country whose potential had once seemed so grand but whose inhabitants now made a mockery of order, decorum, and propriety. Especially after 1800, with Thomas Jefferson’s elevation to the presidency, many New Englanders felt increasingly alienated from the crass, materialistic, and disorderly society America seemed to have become. More and more often they retired to their little closets, abandoning any attempt to influence...

    • Chapter 11 “We Are Fallen on Evil Times”
      Chapter 11 “We Are Fallen on Evil Times” (pp. 309-333)

      Something had changed in America by the turn of the century. From Judith Sargent Murray’s perspective, that something did not bode well. It was not an abrupt change, of course, nor was America as dramatically different as the cries of dismay from New England Federalists would indicate. But for people like Judith, the direction in which the new nation was heading seemed both obvious and alarming. The traditional vision of an organic, relatively static, hierarchical social order was clearly in danger of being replaced by an individualistic, competitive, and dynamic society. It was a time, she observed, when “heads are...

    • Chapter 12 Republican Daughters, Republican Sons
      Chapter 12 Republican Daughters, Republican Sons (pp. 334-368)

      Judith Sargent Murray’s life became more restricted, her focus on her family more pronounced, in the years after the publication of The Gleaner. Although she never lost interest in the outside world, she reluctantly came to the conclusion that she had little chance of becoming the new nation’s Federalist muse. Thus she lived more than ever through her daughter. “My every expectation of terrestrial felicity,” she once told Julia Maria, “reposes upon you.” Uppermost in her mind was “one grand object.” If she realized her desire to give her daughter “as extensive an education as the laws prescribed by custom...

  7. Epilogue
    Epilogue (pp. 369-380)

    In 1818, Judith confided to a close relative that she was exhausted, the victim of the succession of “mortifications” and “sufferings” she had endured over the last few years. Her confidence was low, and she could not help but wonder if God was sending tribulations her way in order to “wean” her from her dependence on earthly pleasures. Heaven had never looked so inviting. She was heartbroken by yet another serious “estrangement” from Winthrop. She worried constantly about Julia Maria’s plight and was especially unhappy because she knew that her daughter’s anomalous position would only be resolved if she joined...

  8. Afterword
    Afterword (pp. 381-384)

    Biographies nearly always end on a subdued and disquieting note. Granted, there are always those fortunate people who manage to avoid dying in their prime and are able to look back on their lives with a sense of satisfaction, a feeling that their time on this earth has been well spent. But many more are like Judith Sargent Murray, melancholy and vaguely disappointed, comparing the dreams of their youth with the reality of their old age. Even those who are content with their achievements generally long to do just a little more. Thus it seems only fair—to Judith and...

  9. List of Archival Sources
    List of Archival Sources (pp. 385-386)
  10. Notes
    Notes (pp. 387-472)
  11. Index
    Index (pp. 473-482)
  12. Acknowledgments
    Acknowledgments (pp. 483-484)
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