Abigail Adams: An American Woman — Book Review

Overview and Primary Sources

In a thorough, well-researched, and well-documented biography, Charles W. Akers presents a multi-faceted portrait of Abigail Adams. The book is scholarly yet written with a lay audience in mind; the text is presented chronologically and with compelling narrative that exposes Adams' persona and opinions. Attesting to its relevance to academia and historiography, Akers' biography is almost entirely based on primary source material — namely the two thousand letters she wrote during the course of her life and the Adams family manuscripts. As Abigail Adams stated to her husband, "My pen is always freer than my tongue. I have wrote many things to you that I suppose I never could have talk'd" (24).

Thankfully, in spite of her lack of formal education, Abigail Adams loved to write and did so prolifically. While she did not author any books or publish any articles or works of fiction, she corresponded regularly with friends and relatives from the time she was a teenager; as an adult she wrote "almost daily" (23). Biographers and historians like Charles Akers therefore have at their disposal a wealth of primary material from which to draw and create an accurate portrait of one of America's first and most dynamic first ladies.

The strengths of Akers' biography, entitled simply Abigail Adams: An American Woman, rest in the author's ability to simultaneously provide personal and intimate details of her life while placing that life within a greater historical, social, and political context. Moreover, Akers accomplishes all this without falling prey to viewing Adams solely as a wife and mother. In fact, Abigail Adams is a feminist biography, one that emphatically accentuates the unique perspective of a woman living in revolutionary America, unapologetically accounting for the limitations that society placed on her — and she upon herself. Viewing her both in her own right as an individual and as the wife and mother of two presidents of the United States, Akers offers his readers insight into both her personal character and the historical period during which she lived.

Social and Political Context

Abigail Adams is an excellent historical reference work that can provide a foundation for studying life in revolutionary America in general. Abigail Adams represents a specific stratum of American life: the upper-class, white, Protestant, New England, and female perspective. In the early chapters of the biography, Akers offers a thorough family background so that the reader can place her in the context of not only her society and times but also her unique upbringing. Her father, William Smith, was a church minister in rural Massachusetts who, despite his piety, refused the evangelical trends sweeping across the colonies known as the Great Awakening. William Smith's moderate views on religion undoubtedly influenced his daughter Abigail, who throughout her life would exhibit moderation in her opinions on most social and political issues.

Although she was a staunch revolutionary, highly critical of the old European powers and strongly in favor of American independence, Abigail Adams was no radical. Her brand of feminism, for instance, included deference to traditional roles of women as wives and mothers. She believed in and campaigned for legal equities for women that would establish them as theoretically equal to men, yet viable in entirely different social spheres. Adams felt that "the proper sphere for women was marriage and motherhood" and that the "emancipation of American women must take place within the confines of marriage, radical Christianity, and republican institutions" (115). Nevertheless, Akers argues that Abigail Adams can be honored by historians as a seminal feminist — if not because she altered public policy, then because she exemplified women's liberation and intellectual independence in her words and deeds. Throughout the biography, Akers continually refers to women's issues and to Abigail Adams' stances in particular. The book is therefore as pertinent to a feminist study of American history as it is to American history in general.

One of the reasons why Abigail Adams makes such a compelling read is that the author painstakingly weaves the personal life of Abigail Adams together with the overarching political and social realities of her lifetime. Adams lived through the Revolutionary War and suffered through smallpox vaccinations and other health-related issues peculiar to life in early America. She traveled to the Old World to be with her husband and thus expanded her vision of the world. Her travels to Europe enabled Adams to place the American Revolution within a broader historical context — something most men, let alone women, of her time would have been unable to do.

Furthermore, Abigail Adams married a man with definite political ambitions and talents. Her husband's career would springboard her own innate intellectualism and prompt her to write frequently on her political viewpoints concerning the War of Independence and America's future. Through his career, in which Abigail was intimately involved, she was able to understand the underlying philosophies of the revolution. Akers brings to his readers the unique voice of Abigail Adams. While her voice might not be representative of the entire population of the new union, it nevertheless sheds light on how one woman perceived the changes occurring in her society and in the world at large. Few other women of her day were able to so thoughtfully compile their opinions and impart their insider knowledge.

Personal Life and Marriage

Through her family and her husband's connections, Adams associated with the likes of John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and John Jay. Historians can therefore use Akers' biography as a source for referencing the lives of these men as well. Abigail Adams held definite and strong opinions, and her characterizations of famous American statesmen could prove useful in offering a more thorough portrait of these legendary political figures. For example, Abigail Adams had little respect for John Hancock, who also happened to marry into the Quincy family. She believed Hancock to be "vain, at worst morally deficient," noticing that his "showy patriotism sprang from vanity or baser motives" (40). Researchers can also glean from Akers' book a more thorough composite of Abigail Adams' husband John Adams as well as of her son John Quincy. Based on her letters and the family manuscripts, Akers lends insight into both of these men alongside Abigail herself.

As the subject of the biography, however, Abigail takes center stage. Her personal life is discussed in full and in detail, including her sexuality. During their courtship, for example, John Adams described her as being "physically passionate," at a time when "emotions pushed hard against the bounds of prudence" (14). Adams was ten years her senior, but their age difference did not prevent their partnership from being as equitable as possible for the era. John Adams, as seen through Abigail's eyes, proved to be the ideal husband for a woman of her nature. Just as she fully supported her husband in his career and endured long years of his absence, so too did he respect her intellectual prowess and value her insights and opinions. Akers suggests that their equitable marriage was also due in part to the social climate in which they thrived: the socially liberal milieu of Massachusetts.

Works Cited

Akers, Charles W. Abigail Adams: An American Woman. Boston: Little, Brown, 1980.