Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
I need not revive in this place a trite discussion. My object at present is simply to
establish the general proposition that men and women are not equals, and that the
laws which aect their relations ought to recognize that fact.
In my next letter I shall examine the opinion that laws which recognize any sort
of inequality between human beings are mere vestiges of the past, against which as
such there lies the strongest of all presumptions.—I am, sir, your obedient servant,
“F.”
3.12.2 Reading and Review Questions
1. Why do you think Murray begin her essay with a poem?
2. How and on what grounds does Murray ask her readers to consider
observed fact as opposed to societal constructs and stereotypes?
3. To what causes does Murray attribute female “inferiority”?
4. What opportunities would equal education aord women?
5. Why does Murray consider the eects of the Bible, or ‘sacred oracles,’ on
society’s views of women’s equality (or lack thereof)?
3.13 PHILIP FRENEAU
(1752–1832)
Born in New York into a well-todo
family, Philip Freneau was tutored
at home before entering the College of
New Jersey (now Princeton University).
The two important focuses of his future
work—that is, politics and literature—
might be discerned in two important
friendships he made there, with James
Madison, a future president, and Hugh
Henry Brackenridge (1748–1816), a
future novelist. He and Brackenridge
collaborated on a commencement poem
entitled The Rising Glory of America. A
humanist and deistic optimist, Freneau
thus early on in his writing expressed
hope for America as a separate,
Image 3.19 | Philip Freneau
democratic—and utopian—nation.
Artist | Frederick Halpin
Source | Wikimedia Commons
After graduating, Freneau taught
License | Public Domain
briefly then traveled in 1776 to the
West Indies to work as secretary on a plantation. His poem “The Beauties of
Santa Cruz” reveals both the beauties of nature there and the misery of the
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