Abigail Adams the First Thing

Abigail Adams

The first thing that jumped out at me while reading chapters thirteen and fourteen of Abigail Adams by Woody Holton was how strong of a woman Adams appears to be throughout chapter thirteen. She is a woman who is on her own, as John is in France, and she is struggling to find ways to keep money coming in. She comes up with the idea to sell things that John ships over from Europe and she is able to make quite a bit of money selling things like chintz, ribbons, and feathers. She is quite independent for a woman of that time and her authoritative nature is also quite present as she knows what she wants and what she doesn't. In chapter fourteen John sends her some chintz that is the wrong color and she immediately pens a letter to tell him and her supplier that it was all wrong.

Abigail is a strong woman and she has no qualms about speaking her mind ever. In chapter thirteen she has received very few letters from John and she writes him to tell him how disappointed she is in him. When she does receive letters, they are short and business-like. While John respects that Abigail is a strong woman, he replies quite harshly to her, threatening not to write to her at all and uses John Quincy as manipulation. This was quite surprising, but they are both such strong characters that we can easily see why they are good together as a married couple.

The presence of Lovell is a concern in chapter thirteen and it even becomes a bigger concern in chapter fourteen. Chapter thirteen ends with the understanding that Lovell has a crush on Abigail, despite the fact that they are both married. They write letters to each other and there is a lot of flirtation on his part, but Abigail needs him and so we understand that she wants to keep the relationship there. She needs him not in the sense of needing a romance, but she needs a man to help her with her business. It is quite disconcerting that Lovell has a wife whom he hasn't seen in four years, and this also bothers Abigail.

The fact that Abigail would keep Lovell around, despite the fact that he is inappropriate with her shows her vulnerabilities as a woman at that time. Her husband is away and while she is good at acting strong and authoritative, she is a woman essentially doing what was a man's job at that time. She doesn't escape John's criticism, however, when it comes to her financial management.

Both John and Abigail are people that never were concerned with the luxuries of life, but it is how Abigail makes her money while John is away. She sells the things that woman want and think they need and she is able to survive off of this.

At the end of chapter fourteen, Abigail shows her strength and her entrepreneurial sense again by stating to John that she wanted to buy a 1,650-acre tract in Salem. Once again, it is hard to imagine a woman of this era doing all of this on her own with only the help of her husband through correspondence.