These Fiery Frenchified Dames: Women and Political Culture in Early National Philadelphia

Abstract

These Fiery Frenchified Dames: Women and Political Culture in Early National Philadelphia. By Susan Branson. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. Pp. 218. Illustrations, maps. Cloth, $47.50; paper, $17.50.) Less is more, as my acting teacher used to say; as this compact volume proves, less can do more as well. Susan Branson's These Fiery Frenchified Dames: Women and Political Culture in Early National Philadelphia is an important book for anyone interested in women's lives and gender, political process, or early founding period. But it is also a model of concise and elegant research and writing and goes a long way toward fulfilling promise made long ago by New History-that is, that old mainstream political narratives would ultimately be transformed by subtle, nuanced analyses of new subfields such as African-American studies, social history, and women's history. These Fiery Frenchified Dames takes as its topic early national Philadelphia's elite and middle-class white women and their changing public in face of dynamic forces, while also fixing them firmly within a big picture. As Branson skillfully delineates these creative and adaptive processes, she also incorporates growing body of literature about role of ordinary people on seemingly top-down political formation. Her analysis of French Revolution makes a convincing case for increasing international perspectives when discussing this era. How Branson treats gendered spheres, moreover, forces Jirgen Habermas's conception of public sphere to be useful and not just suggestive. And Branson provides an always-salutary reminder of difference between rhetoric and reality; in this case, what real eighteenth-century women did and said set against public rhetoric that Linda K. Kerber termed Republican Motherhood. Certainly Branson's research shows that a popular version of women's history narrative must evolve. She does not disagree with Kerber that women's legal positions remained little changed in postrevolutionary era. Nor does she dispute existence and power of conservative ideology that paid lip service to women's civic roles (1-2) while confining them to home. Rather, Branson asserts that Republican Motherhood is not end of story. Focusing on behavior and words of women, she finds evidence of significant change in women's public lives in 1780s and 1790s, changes that linked what Branson calls nascent protofeminism (2) of eighteenth-century women such as Judith Sargent Murray and Mary Wollstonecraft with larger female political movements of nineteenth century. In conventional narrative, gendered spheres of activity, at least as rhetorical devices, emerged in first decades of nineteenth century alongside growth of capitalism, consumerism, and a new middle class. In contrast, absorbing view of Philadelphia women that Branson offers shows us that rhetoric and resistance were alive and well in 1790s. Though American women were asked to restrict themselves behind the domestic line (a lovely martial image supplied by Thomas Jefferson), Branson demonstrates that political, social, and cultural forces propelled upper- and middle-class women from margins of politics to center-and that they took full advantage of these new opportunities. In Philadelphia-Judith Sargent Murray called it metropolis of America-women used their wartime experiences to build new postrevolutionary lives within an increasingly diverse popular culture. Utilizing republican rhetoric to redefine their relationship to state, they entered spheres of politics and culture as participants, initiating a public discussion about women's rights and place in national life. These daughters of liberty, as Mary Beth Norton referred to this generation, developed as a constituency as Federalists and Republicans alike vied for a female imprimatur for their respective national visions. …