Dogood: All women are idle and silly, except for me!

Ben Franklin’s choice to write under a female pseudonym in the Silence Dogood letters adds another element of ambiguity to the texts. In many letters, he addresses the issues of women and compares women to men, yet because the stated purpose of the letters is to ‘entertain’ it is difficult to distinguish his true opinions on the opposite sex.

In some cases, he seems to be defending the role of women in society. In one letter, Dogood rebuffs “Ephram Censorious” for speaking of the intolerability of female pride. In the same letter, he quotes a writer at length who rails against the denial of education to women: “What has Woman done to forfeit the privilege of being taught?” For a moment, it seems that he may be rallying around the feminist cause. Yet, even in this letter Franklin seems to be less concerned with the repressed state of women than the sinful condition of men. Despite the nudge to feminism, Franklin’s letter is concerned not with the potential of women, but with the vices of men. He is simply using the arguments for women’s education to point out why women are idle, encouraging men to stop complaining about annoyances they themselves have created.

The Silence Dogood letters also often make jokes about women and it seems to me that Franklin does not think much of the “fairer sex,” despite his position to take up his pen disguised as one. He jokes that men are always complaining about their work, but clearly women work harder because “if you go among the women, you will learn, that they always have more work upon their hands than they are able to do.” He asks women to make their hoop skirts smaller, because they do not pay any taxes yet they take up more room on the public sidewalk than men. In two letters he poke fun at widows, and in his 12^th letter he jokes that women are more eloquent than men, because they can talk for hours about nothing. I find it odd that he has chosen to write under a female name, yet so often deplores the female sex.

I would be very interested to know how Silence Dogood’s readers imagined their entertainer. Surely, no one in Franklin’s time took the name Silence Dogood seriously. I also find it hard to believe that the people of Boston thought a country-raised woman (regardless of her ludicrous back-story) was writing these letters and taking on larger than life issues like freedom of speech and the meaning of learning. If people assumed the character to be the fabrication of a man’s mind, would they take the musings on the female sex more or less seriously? If they believed that Dogood was really a woman, weren’t they suspicious that she would be so disparaging of her own kind?

Franklin- dishing out what he can't take in return

“Being frequently censur’d and condemn’d by different Persons for printing Things which they say out not to be printed, I have sometimes though it might be necessary to make a standing Apology for my self, and publish it once a Year, to be read upon all Occasions of that Nature.” These are Benjamin Franklin’s words in Apology for Printers, which is essentially a list of “particulars” that Franklin requests “all who are angry with him to calmly consider.” I find it interesting that Franklin is quick to defend what he writes from the standpoint that what he prints are mere opinions. He takes the attitude that people should relax because one can never please everybody. Perhaps Franklin should take a look in the mirror at the man who wrote Printer’s Errors and Rules for The New-England Courant. Both publications quickly and aggressively point out his issues with each publication, but even if one does not support religion, who is he to suggest that the newspaper is need of rules simply because, “Religion is our safety and security, and if we lose the Honour of that, no small part of our strength and Glory will be lost with it.” Ironically, Franklin preached the acceptance of all churches despite his affiliation as a Puritan. For a man who believes in religious acceptance and believes in one’s right to defend his publications, he is abrasive with others who he judges to be doing harm to the community. It is evident that Franklin has tolerance for any pious man, but for the individual who has no religious association he has no patience. Not only does he not have patience for the non- religious man, he will publically defame the publication of the individual who does not emphasize or perhaps deemphasizes the church in a way that does not suit Franklin. The publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette misspells a few words and Franklin classifies it as not gentleman-like and obvious in exposing “the continual Blunders of your Contemporary.” I sure hope Franklin never misspells a few words, I have a feeling his peers would be quick to jump on the man who apparently thinks, “That it is unreasonable to imagine Printers approve of every thing they print, and to censure them on any particular thing accordingly.”