Silence Dogood Essay No. 5 — Pride and Idleness

In this installment, Teen Ben Franklin uses Silence to push back against a male critic - in today's world, we might call him part of the manosphere- when he suggests that she should criticize women for being lazy before turning her ire to men.  Silence turns the tables and shows that men are just as guilty of pride and idleness and are often the cause of a woman's faults.  It's a pretty forward-thinking essay written by a 16-year-old in 1722 with a very modern point of view. 

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Transcript

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Hi there, Kelly Cody Grimm with Creative Actors Lab and the Spectral Summit. And in this essay, we are going to look at how Ben Franklin looks at women, pride, and idleness. And in this lively installment, 16-year-old Franklin uses the voice of Mrs. Dugod to push against a male critic who argued that she should criticize women before daring to comment on men. Dugod turns the tables entirely, arguing that men are just as guilty of pride and idleness as women, and are often the very cause of a woman's faults. Written boldly in 1722 by a 16-year-old male, this essay reveals a surprisingly progressively young Franklin willing to challenge the social assumptions of colonial Boston with wit, logic, and a healthy dose of sarcasm. Sit back and enjoy. May twenty eighth, seventeen twenty two Sir, I am here to present your readers with a letter from one who informs me that I have begun at the wrong end of my business, and that I ought to begin at home, and censure the vices and follies of my own sex before I venture to meddle with yours. Nonetheless, I am resolved to dedicate this speculation to the fair tribe and endeavor to show that Mr. Ephraim charges women with being particularly guilty of pride, idleness, etc., wrongfully, inasmuch as men have not only a great share of those vices as the women, but are likewise the great measure of the cause of that which the women are guilty of. I think it would be best to produce my antagonist before I encounter him. Madam, my design in troubling you with this letter is to desire you would begin to look at your own sex first. Let the first volley of your resentments be directed against female vice. Let female idleness, ignorance, and folly, which are vices more particular to your sex than to ours, be the subject of your satires, but more especially female pride, which I think is intolerable. Here is a large field that wants cultivation, in which I believe you are able, if willing, to improve with advantage when you have once reformed the women. You will find it much easier task to reform the men, because women are the prime causes of a great many of man's enormities. This is all at present from your friendly well-wisher, Ephraim Centaurius. After thanks to my correspondent for his kindness in cutting out work for me, I must assure him that I find it very difficult matter to reprove. Women separate from men, for which vice is there in which the men have not a great share in as the women? And in some they have a far greater, as in drunkenness, swearing, and if they have, then it follows that when a vice is being reproved, men who are more culpable deserve the most reprehension, and certainly therefore ought to have it. But we will waive this point at present and proceed to a particular consideration of what my correspondent calls female vice. As for idleness, if I should query, were the greatest number of the vulture is to be found with the men? It might, I believe, easily and truly answered with the latter. For notwithstanding, the men are commonly complaining about how hard they are forced to labor, only to maintain their wives in pomp and idleness, and yet if you go among the women, you will learn that they have always more work upon their hands than they are able to do, and that a woman's work is never done. But, however, suppose we should grant for once that we are generally more idle than the men, without making any allowance for the weakness of the sex? I desire to know whose fault this is. Are not the men to blame for their folly in maintaining us in idleness? Who is there that can be handsomely supported in affluence, ease, pleasure, by another that will chase rather than earn his bread by the sweat of his own brows? And if a man will be so fond and so foolish as to labour hard himself for a livelihood, and suffer his wife in this mean time to sit in ease and idleness, let him not blame her if she does so, for it is a great measure of his own fault. And now for the ignorance and folly which he reproaches us with, let us see if we are fools and ignoramuses. Who is the fault, the men or ours? An ingenious writer, having this subject in hand, has the following words wherein he lays the fault wholly at the men in not allowing women the advantages of education. I have, says he, often thought, that one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as civilized in a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women. We reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence, while I am confident that they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves. One would wonder, indeed, how it should happen that women are conversible at all, since they are beholding to natural parts for all their knowledge. Their youth is spent to teach them to stitch and sew, or make baubles, and they are taught to read indeed and perhaps go write their names or so, that is, all the height of the women's education. And I would but ask who slight the sex for their understanding? What is a man, a gentleman, I mean, good for, that is taught no more? If knowledge and understanding had been useless, additions to the sex, God Almighty would have never given them the capacities, for he made nothing needless. So what has women done to forfeit the privilege of being taught? Does she plague us with pride and impertinence? Why not let her learn that she might have some more wit? Shall we upbraid women with folly? When 'tis only the error of the inhuman custom that hindered them to make them wiser. So much for female ignorance and folly, and then let us little consider the pride which my correspondent thinks is intolerable. By this expression of his, one would think he has some dejected swine to rounds over some cruel, haughty nymph, who perhaps he thinks is no more reason to be proud than himself. Alasaday, what shall we say to this case? Why truly, if women are proud, is it certainly owing to the men still? For if they would be such simpletons as to humble themselves at their feet and fill their credulous ears with extravagant praise of their wit, their beauty, and other assumptions, perhaps there are none too. And when the women are by this means persuaded they are something more than humane. What wonder is it if they carry themselves haughtily and live extravagantly, notwithstanding, I believe there are more instances of extravagant pride to be found among men than among women, and this fault is certainly more heinous to the former than to the latter. Upon the whole, I conclude that it would be impossible to lash at any vice of which men are not equally guilty with the women, and consequently deserve an equal, if not greater, share in the censure. However, I extort both to amend where both are culpable. Otherwise, they may expect to be severely handled by sir, your humble servant, Silence Dogood. And B, Miss Doogood has lately left her seat in the county and come to Boston, where she intends to tarry for the summer season in order to complete her observations of the present reigning vices of the town. All right, well, silence definitely takes Ephraim to task for thinking that women are idle. So Ben Franklin wrote this in defense of women in 1722, which was over 150 years before women could vote. Thank you again so much for listening. We really appreciate it, and we enjoy having you as part of the Spectral Summit and Creative Actors Lab. For more information on what we do, you can go to our website www.spectral summit.com. Thank you again and have a great day.