70 The Colonial and Revolutionary PeriodsImplicitly, it also excluded “Indians” and “Negroes,” since what it meant, of course,
was all white men. An idealist like Jefferson might wrestle conscientiously with such
exclusions (while, perhaps, painfully aware that he himself was a slaveholder); a man
like John Adams might insist on them, however teasingly. But they could not go
unnoticed, and especially by those, like Abigail Adams, who were excluded. The lit-
erature of the Revolutionary period includes not only the visionary rhetoric and
rational arguments of those men by and for whom the laws of the new republic were
primarily framed but also the writings of those who felt excluded, ignored, or left
out. As John Adams, for all his irony, was forced to acknowledge, the political and
social turmoil of the times was bound to make disadvantaged, marginalized groups
more acutely aware of their plight. After all, he had his wife to remind him.
Among the leading voices of the American Revolution, there are some who, at
least, were willing to recognize the rights of women. Notably, Thomas Paine spoke
of the need for female equality. “If we take a survey of ages and countries,” he wrote
in “An Occasional Letter on the Female Sex” (1775), “we shall find the women,
almost – without exception – at all times and in all places, adored and oppressed.”
So, at greater length, did Judith Sargent Murray (1751–1820). Murray wrote, among
other things, two plays and a number of poems; she also wrote two essay series for
the Massachusetts Magazine from 1792 to 1794. One essay series, The Repository,
was largely religious in theme. The other, The Gleaner, considered a number of
issues, including federalism, literary nationalism, and the equality of the sexes.
A three-volume edition of The Gleaner was published in 1798; and in it is to be
found her most influential piece, “On the Equality of the Sexes” (1790), which estab-
lishes her claim to be regarded as one of the first American feminists. Here, Murray
argued that the capacities of memory and imagination are equal in women and men
and that, if women are deficient as far as the two other faculties of the mind, reason
and judgment, are concerned, it is because of a difference in education. If only
women were granted equal educational opportunities, Murray insisted, then they
would be the equal of men in every respect. Or, as she put it, “if we are allowed an
equality of acquirement, let serious studies equally employ our minds, and we will
bid our souls arise to equal strength.”
Murray’s arguments were built on a firm belief in the equality of male and female
souls. “The same breath of God, enlivens, and invigorates us,” she told her male
readers, “we are not fallen lower than yourselves.” A young woman should be
addressed “as a rational being,” she declared in a 1784 essay (“Desultory Thoughts
upon the Utility of encouraging a degree of Self-Complacency especially in Female
Bosoms”); she should be taught “a reverence for self,” and she should be encouraged
to aspire, since “ambition is a noble principle.” Murray was inspired as many of her
contemporaries were by the events and rhetoric of the times. Her other works
include, for instance, a patriotic poem celebrating the “genius” of George Washington
and anticipating the moment when the arts and sciences would flourish in “blest
Columbia” (“Occasional Epilogue to the Contrast; a Comedy, Written by Royal Tyler,
Esq.” (1794)). Unlike most of her contemporaries, however, that inspiration led her
to consider the anomalous position of her own sex and to argue that the anomalyGGray_c01.indd 70ray_c 01 .indd 70 8 8/1/2011 7:54:56 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 56 AM