Abigail Smith: Idealist on Women's Rights
Abigail Smith was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, a rural area just outside of Boston. Her upbringing had a significant impact on her later life and her women's rights ideologies. Growing up in the farmlands of Massachusetts gave her a lifelong understanding of the countryside and farming. She explores this within the first chapter as she reminisces about the freedom she felt living within nature. This became significant later in her life as she had to manage the family farm entirely by herself as John Adams went to Europe. It was her ability to be independent as a child that greatly influenced her ability to be an independent woman later on. Furthermore, another influence on her life was her family. Her father was a Clergy-men and her mother was a descendant of a strong line of clergymen. As a result, they were highly educated and were able to provide her ability and access to knowledge wider than the traditional house-educated woman. Education has a significant impact on children and this is evident in Abigail Smith, one of the principle rights that she advocated in her woman's rights campaigns is increasing the education of women and expanding their role within the education domain. Although Abigail was home schoole
Her actions furthermore were a mere reflection of her times, as many revolutionary households were dependent on the women to manage farms and households at once. Abigail not only took care of the family farm, but also started her own business selling products that John sent from Europe and even speculated in currency trading and bought property under John's name. She extended her influence beyond farming into establishing a well run import business in which she sold many different wares that John sent home from Europe. This is the second major way in which she affected her family. d like most traditional woman of her time, the results of being in a clergymen's household combined with the elements of freedom she was granted and the privilege of being the congregational minister's daughter were significant impacts her on ability to be self-dependent and formulate nontraditional views of feminism. This is a far cry from the delicate and dainty vision of women that her era attempted to portray. John's absences exemplified her strengths and indeed did foster a spirit of independence. There are few opportunities given for women to assert their independence and the revolutionary war was one of those periods. Her independence and her ingenuity proved to John that women had a place in both America and the new Constitution. She is typical to the Revolutionary era women in many different ways. Her most obvious similarity is the way women were raised and treated in this time period. She also was traditionally taught in all aspects of home making such as knitting, cooking, and housekeeping. Additionally, she acted as many Revolutionary women did while their husbands were on the war front. Furthermore, it gave her the opportunity to discover abilities and moral fiber that she never knew she had. In a letter to John she writes, "The unfeeling world may consider it in what light they please, I consider it as a sacrifice to my Country".
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