Judith Sargent Murray: The Ideal Late 1700 Woman

The Ideal late 1700 Woman Susanna Rowson and Judith Sargent Murray were women from the late 1700s who had their own image of the ideal woman. Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte: A Tale of Truth and Judith Sargent Murray’s On the Equality of the Sexes were written to educate, inform, and to guide women in the right path. Murray and Rowson hoped to change the way women were being seduced by men and the way they were viewed by society and themselves,
Susanna Rowson and Judith Sargent Murray saw women’s roles in the early United States similar. In the 1700s women had a basic education of reading and writing and most were trained to become mothers and house wives. Women’s job was to take care of the children at home, cook, clean, and do housework;
Judith Sargent Murray’s On the Equality of the Sexes was written to give women the education they deserved and needed. Murray felt that women were capable of doing more than housework; she believed they could do the same as men if not to be better than them. To prove that women and men were equal and should be getting the same education she questions, “May not the intellectual powers be ranged under these four heads- imagination, reason, memory, and judgment?” As the Enlighten women she gave evidence to everything she said or wrote. She proved that men and women had the same capability to imagine. She wrote “but as proofs of a creative faculty, of a lively imagination”, Murray’s evidence that women had an imagination was gossiping. If women didn’t have an imagination how would they be able to come up with such interesting rumors and gossip? Murray goes on to say, “Are we deficient in reason? We can only reason from what we know, and if an opportunity of acquiring knowledge hath been denied us, the inferiority of our sex cannot fairly be deduced from thence.” She is saying if they teach women physics, psychology, and other subjects besides the basics they can prove they have the same power of reasoning as men. She then proves that women also have the power of memory, because women memorize stories and share them with others. Murray wrote, “Female would become discreet, their judgment would be
When she wrote Charlotte: A Tale of Truth, she wanted to protect vulnerable young women from doing the wrong thing. She wrote, “Oh my dear girls—for to such only am I writing—listen not to the voice of love, unless sanctioned by paternal approbation: be assured, it is now past the days of romance." Rowson felt that women should know some of the basics to protect themself from rakes, and wanted to teach them to marry the right man. She felt as if young women were easily seduced by men. She warns the reader by writing “In affairs of love, a young heart is never in more danger than when attempted by a handsome young soldier.” For example, Charlotte decided to rebel against her parents and became romantically involved with Montraville, a man her parents disapproved of. Charlotte was a young naïve 15 year old girl that got seduced by an attractive man that promised “the world” to her. He promised to marry her but instead, took her to New York, and then he abandoned her and their unborn child. Charlotte’s fate went bad when she decided to follow her heart instead of her parents. She was seduced and betrayed by the man she fell deeply in love with, this is what Rowson was trying to prevent in the lives of her young readers. In Part II of Judith Sargent Murray’s essay she wrote, “Praise is sweet to the soul; we are immediately intoxicated by large