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Article: The Women Within a Dynasty
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- December 9, 1987
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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THE ADAMS WOMEN
Abigail & Louisa Adams, Their Sisters and Daughters
By Paul C. Nagel
Oxford University Press. 310 pp. $19.95
Paul C. Nagel's "The Adams Women" quotes a 1790 letter from Mary
Smith Cranch to her sister Abigail Smith Adams, musing on the trials
of their sex. "You and I have been better wives than the world will
ever know," Mary writes, "or give us credit for."
Nagel does not quote the judgment of another Adams on the
subject of female anonymity-Henry's in "The Education"-that the
19th-century American woman lives on only as "the man saw her," but
his book is another significant correction of history's tendency to
silence on the distaff side. Beginning at the beginning, ...