Mr. Jefferson's Women - Rilegato

Kukla, Jon

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 1400043247 ISBN 13: 9781400043248

Casa editrice: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2007

Riassunto

A pioneering study of Thomas Jefferson’s relationships with women in his personal life and in American society and politics.

The author of the Declaration of Independence, who wrote the words “all men are created equal,” was surprisingly hostile toward women. In eight chapters based on fresh research in little-used sources, Jon Kukla offers the first comprehensive study of Jefferson and women since the controversies of his presidency.

Educated with other boys at a neighborhood boarding school, young Jefferson learned early that homemaking was the realm of his mother and six sisters. From adolescence through maturity, his views about domesticity scarcely wavered, while his discomfort around women brought a succession of embarrassments as he sought to control his emotions. After Rebecca Burwell declined his awkward proposal of marriage, Jefferson reacted first with despondence, then with predatory misogyny, and finally with the attempted seduction of Elizabeth Moore Walker, the wife of a boyhood friend. His marriage at twenty-nine to Martha Wayles Skelton brought a decade of genuine happiness, but ended in despair with her death from complications of childbirth. In Paris a few years later, Maria Cosway rekindled his capacity for romantic friendship but ultimately disappointed his hopes. Against the background of these relationships, Kukla offers a fresh and cogent account of Jefferson’s liaison with Sally Hemings.

Jefferson’s individual relationships with these women are examined in depth in five chapters. Abigail Adams, the women of Paris, and the wife of a British ambassador figure in the first of two closing chapters that examine Jefferson’s attitudes toward women in public life. In the last chapter, Kukla draws connections between Jefferson’s life experiences and his role in defining the subordination of women in law, culture, and education during and after the American Revolution.

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Recensione

“Fascinating. . . . Serious, meticulous, and well-written.”
—The Boston Globe

“A fine, critical and needed study of one aspect of Jefferson's complicated and extraordinary life.”
—The Times-Picayune

“Kukla knows his period. . . . As the last few years have made abundantly clear, Thomas Jefferson was rather less sterling than his prose.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Will make people with open minds think again about what they believe.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Persuasive and entertaining.”
—American Heritage
From the Trade Paperback edition.

L'autore

Jon Kukla received his B.A. from Carthage College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. From 1973 through 1990 he directed historical research and publishing at the Library of Virginia. From 1992 to 1998 he was curator and then director of the Historic New Orleans Collection. From 2000 to 2007 he was director of Red Hill–The Patrick Henry National Memorial in Charlotte County, Virginia. He now lives and writes in Richmond, Virginia.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Data di pubblicazione: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1400043247
• ISBN 13: 9781400043248
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 279