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Sentiments of a British-American Woman: Esther DeBerdt Reed and the American Revolution by Owen S. Ireland

2019; Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Volume: 143; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/pmh.2019.0006

2169-8546

Rachel Love Monroy,

American Constitutional Law and Politics

Reviewed by: Sentiments of a British-American Woman: Esther DeBerdt Reed and the American Revolution by Owen S. Ireland Rachel Monroy Sentiments of a British-American Woman: Esther DeBerdt Reed and the American Revolution. By Owen S. Ireland. ( University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017.) Owen Ireland's timely work is the necessary monograph Esther DeBerdt Reed has long deserved. Ireland presents Esther Reed as a woman who accepted gender constraints while believing that her sex occupied a vital position within the coalescing early republic. He traces her development into a wife, mother, and political organizer, restoring her work with the Ladies Association of Philadelphia to its proper context. [End Page 105] From her early days in London, Esther cultivated knowledge of her father's profession in Atlantic trade while learning to influence the men around her, first in coaxing her father to accept Joseph Reed's proposal and then persuading her secret fiancé to settle in London. Her father's premature death and financial troubles facilitated the couple's marriage but upset Esther's design for remaining in England. In Philadelphia, Esther directed her brother's professional development and united the two families' merchant connections. She oversaw her brother's maturation from afar, "guiding, educating, disciplining" and "on occasion praising" his progress in London while she cooperated with Joseph on business (108). The outbreak of war both complicated Esther's allegiances and focused her attention. Initially Esther viewed the struggle as a detached observer, but it became personal with the death of her young daughter during the British occupation of Philadelphia. The couple's loss intensified their patriotic fervor, which burned strongest against the lukewarm Philadelphians cavorting with British soldiers. After the British evacuation in 1778 forced the Reeds to retreat to the country, they returned to Philadelphia with a renewed vigor. Esther succeeded in "channeling Joseph's anger and energy" into a position as president of Pennsylvania's Supreme Executive Council, and she seamlessly assumed her place beside him (173). Ireland rejects earlier interpretations of Esther's political activism, which saw her work as a parting with the gendered boundaries she had previously respected. Instead he sees her founding of the Ladies Association of Philadelphia as a necessary exception within war's extraordinary circumstances. In peace women advanced the public good through "traditional reproductive and productive roles," but in times of crisis "they pursued this end by whatever means necessary" (191). Similarly, Washington's suggestion that Esther use the funds to make shirts for the soldiers was not an affront to Esther's abandoned femininity and an attempt to return her to her proper domestic space but the culmination of a "polite duel" between worthy opponents (203). Far from seeing her as a mere lady in George Washington's sewing circle, Washington respected Esther as a fellow leader in the patriot cause. But sadly Esther did not live long enough to see her funds spent and the shirts delivered, dying of dysentery the following month. In sum, Ireland's work places Esther's political activism in its proper context, although Esther is sometimes lost in the shadow of her husband. But perhaps this further proves Ireland's argument for her ability to skillfully maneuver within the confines of her gender. While accepting of her limited female role in society, Esther was far from a passive subject under her husband's control. Instead, she repeatedly employed her knowledge and skill to successfully direct and influence the men in her life. [End Page 106] Rachel Monroy University of South Carolina Copyright © 2019 Clearance Center, Inc.