Paine and Women

When first reading Thomas Paine’s “Women, Adored and Oppressed,” I enjoyed it because of the great points it made about women and men’s oppression of them throughout the world. A line in the second paragraph of the essay sums up Paine’s point pretty well: “Continually surrounded by griefs and fears, the women more than share all [men’s] miseries, and are besides subjected to ills which are peculiarly their own.” Paine then goes on to describe several “savage” cultures around the world and how horribly the women in these cultures are treated to back up his point. This is seemingly a work devoted to promoting women’s rights, at first glance.

One culture that Paine does not describe in his essay, however, is Western culture. He describes in detail the treatment of women in several other cultures, but despite the plethora of examples of unfair male domination over women he could have brought up from his own culture, he doesn’t say a word. Instead, he adds this paragraph at the end of the piece: “All men, however, it must be owned, have not been equally unjust to their fair companions. In some countries public honors have been paid to women. Art has erected them monuments. Eloquence has celebrated their virtues, and History has collected whatever could adorn their character.” One can only assume that “some countries” is meant to mean European countries, because men in these countries do not subject women to horrors as bad as the horrors savage women must endure. With this paragraph, Paine seems to be saying that compared to all of the savage cultures just described, Western society treats its women darn well and they should stop complaining.

Paine’s piece is admirable in that it recognizes that women throughout history and throughout the world have been oppressed by men and that it needs to stop. Where his piece falls short, though, is when he assumes that Western men do not oppress Western women. Based on a lot of the other readings we have read in this class, however, Paine was quite wrong.

Why mess with a good thing?

Taking into consideration the wide breath of subjects we have read about this week, I have to say what kills me is that a man so astute as Franklin could confront every insufficient explanation of the natural world with gusto, yet ignore the unexplained and unhappy existence of those creatures occupying no less than half of his immediate society. In letters and essays, Franklin delights us with his minute perceptions, observations, and records of natural phenomena. He shrewdly takes on and subsequently tears apart common perceptions of storm patterns, electricity, floods, and human health. He doesn’t seem to lose any sleep over society’s reaction to his conjectures on these subjects because he has dragged them to his own tribunal and tested them against empirical evidence.

Catching a cold from being cold is a lot easier to fix than the transmission of sickness due to stifling, confined living spaces. Franklin’s theory on colds is still challenged today by grandmothers worldwide. Yet this did not stop him from throwing open a window and telling Adams to trust him and his theory. We can therefore assume that Franklin was not worried about displeasing society when he believed himself to be correct. This makes me wonder why he never turned his thoughts to the situation of “the fair sex” with the same ruthless, scientific questioning with which he attacked everything else in life.

His letter on choosing a mistress, though it parades as a logical proof of a well-researched theory, is teaming with winks and arrogance. It has none of the technical data or scrutiny that characterize his writings on other facets of life. In fact, the letter seems to be nothing more than a reiteration of humorous axioms recited by men in bars: “If you put a barrel on her head, who’d know the difference? Hahaha!”

One would think that a man like Franklin, with his extensive practice in scientific observation, would have, through everyday interactions, examinations, and musings, been able to come up with some more interesting thoughts about women than that the older set would be “so grateful” for some love. Perhaps this omission from his writings, which to me seems like a gaping hole, shows a deficiency in mankind in general. After all, who in their right mind would question a system that seems to be working out just fine for them?

The Balance of Power

As a modern American woman, I obviously felt that some of our readings last night were way out of line with my view of the world, and I thought that most people in the U.S. today agreed with me that husbands should not have absolute control over their wives and that obedience is not the most important trait in a wife. But I was studying with a friend of mine and telling him about how ridiculous some of the readings were, and I was extremely surprised to hear that he actually agrees with Rousseau, that wives should be submissive to their husbands and allow them to make all decisions in the marriage. He was telling me about how his mother actually lives by these rules and is perfectly happy, and he plans on marrying someone who is willing to be obedient and submissive. It never even occurred to me that there are still people – even people I know and respect! – who believe that these outdated ideas about women are true.

This incident really made me think about whether or not it is really that bad for a wife to be subordinate to her husband. Obviously, I came to the conclusion that it really is a bad system that oppresses women. But on the other hand, I do not think that the relationship between husbands and wives today is really up to scratch in many cases today either. There are a lot of feminists in the world who think wives should be in control of their husbands just as Rousseau wanted husbands to be in control of their wives. Even normal women who aren’t crazy feminists feel pressure to be free from the tyranny of men, which is a completely justified feeling, but it can often create a lot of tension as husbands and wives struggle to be in control. In a perfect world, there would be a different balance of power between husbands and wives, and I do not pretend to know where that balance should be, but it is not what Rousseau wrote about in “Duties of Women” and it is not the tension of today. The sexes should be equal, but one cannot deny that men and women are different and should have different roles in marriage. Maybe one day society will find a good balance and everyone can chill out and live in wedded bliss.

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?

Silence Dogood - Defender of the Fair Sex

Franklin's portrayal of the fairer sex is quite impressive, and it becomes clear he is set not only on conquering and exploring moral issues, which apply to all people, but defending women against the tremendous problems, which faced them in this era. It is intriguing to me that a teenage boy, usually simultaneously fascinated and confused by women, could so accurately portray one and empathetically describe not only one woman’s problems, but also problems that all women face.

Women were perceived as ignorant and less serious than men, as addressed in Do Good #5. Dogood/Franklin retorts by arguing that any fault in women is mirrored if not surpassed by the same fault in men. Dogood explains that although men go out to work, “A woman’s work is never done”. “She” valiantly defends women further in this letter stating that any ignorance they are perceived to have is directly related to women’s inability to receive an education. “I have (says he) often thought of it as one of the most barbarous Customs in the World, considering us a civiliz’d and Christian Country, that we deny the Advantages of Learning to Women.” That Franklin would so boldly advocate women’s rights, and find it an important issue to bear upon at such a young age is impressive. Furthermore, he illustrates well why women act as they do, in the context of their upbringing and society’s expectations of them.

He further explores the rights and needs of women in Do Good #10 which describes the need for the creation of an office for widow’s insurance, in which all married couples contribute. Such an office would guarantee something to live off of if women are widowed. He constructs a sound argument by predicting problems that could occur in such a system and offering solutions such as in the event those who apply have a husband who is already sick, those who marry someone very old etc. “We have (says he) abundance of Women, who have been Bred well, and Liv’d well, Ruin’d in a few Years, and perhaps, left Young, with a House full of Children, and nothing to support them”

Dogood/ Franklin stands up for the rights of women and provides thought provoking justification for their behavior as well as a powerful argument for a social system which invests in women’s education and well being.