Silence Dogood Essay No. 6 - The Vice of Pride

Having moved from the countryside to Boston for the summer, Mrs. Dogood sets her sights on one of colonial society's most despised flaws: pride. Franklin crafts a sharp and funny meditation on vanity, describing how pride blinds people to their own faults while making them hyper-critical of others. You have to wonder what Silence would think of today's influencer culture. 

While teen Ben Franklin wrote these essays to troll his brother James, who wouldn't publish his writing in his newspaper, but would publish the musings of a middle-aged widow, it's amazing how relevant these essays are today. 

Learn more about The Spectral and Literary Summit at our website - www.spectral-summit.com.  We offer historic and literary videos and podcasts that make the past and literature come alive.  This is a production of Creative Actors Lab . Check out our Instagram page here. 

Transcript

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Hi there, Kelly Cody Grimm again with the Spectral Summit and Creative Actors Lab. And what we're going to look at today is essay number six, written by 16-year-old Ben Franklin, who we would say now would be trolling his brother James and wanting him to print his own work, but James refused. So young 16-year-old Ben came up with the character Silence Dugood, who is a middle-aged widow who would write and critique Boston society, and these essays were a huge hit. So this is essay number six, and the topic is The Vice of Pride. So having moved from the countryside to Boston for the summer, Mrs. Doogood sets her sights on a colonial society's most despised flaws, pride. Franklin crafts a sharp and funny meditation on vanity, describing how pride blinds people to their own faults while making them hypercritical of others. Gee, does that sound familiar? I think so. In a charming moment of self-depreciation, Silence even confesses that she herself spent several youthful years convinced that she ruled the world. This essay showcases the young Franklin's growing confidence as a social critic, skewering Boston's pretensions with humor and moral authority in equal measure. Sir, among the many reigning vices of the town, which may at any time come under my consideration and reprehension, there is none which I am more inclined to expose than that of pride. It is acknowledged by all to be a vice, and the most hateful to God and man. Even those who nourish it in themselves hate to see it in others. The proud man aspires to be nothing less than the unlimited superiority over his fellow creatures. He has made himself a king, soliloquy, and fancies himself conquering the world and the inhabitants thereby consulting are proper methods to acknowledge this merit. I speak it to my shame that I myself was the queen from the fourteenth to the eighteenth year of my age, and governed the world all the time of my being, governed by my master. But this speculative pride may have been the subject of another letter. I shall at present convine my thoughts at what we call pride of apparel. The sort of pride has been growing upon us ever since we parted with the homespun clothes of the fourteenth Pentistofs, and the pride of apparel has begun, and nourished us in the pride of the heart, which portends the ruin of the church and state. Pride goeth before the destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. And I remember, my late Reverend Husband, would often say upon this text that the fall was the natural consequence, as well as the punishment of pride. Daily experience is sufficient to evice the truth of the observation that persons of small fortune under the dominion of this vice seldom consider the inability to maintain themselves in it, but strive to initiate their superiors in the estate, or equals in folly, until one misfortune comes upon the neck of another, and every step they take is a step backwards. By striving to appear rich they become really poor, and deprive themselves of the pity and charity which is due to the humble poor man who is made to more immediately by this providence. The pride of apparel will appear the more foolish if we consider that those airy mortals who have no other way of making themselves considerable but by gorgeous apparel, draw after them cowards for imitators, who hate each other while they endeavour upon similitude of manners. They destroy by example and envy one another's destruction. I cannot dismiss this subject without some observation on the particular fashion now reigning among my own sex, and the most immodest and inconvenient of any of the art of women has invented, namely that of the hoop petticoats. And these are incompatible in their general and particular calling, and therefore they cannot answer the ends of the necessary or the ornament apparel. This monstros topsy turvy m piece are neither in for the church, for the hall, or the kitchen, and if a number of them are very well mounted on the noodles island, they would look more like engines of war for bombarding the town than of ornaments of the fair sex. An honest neighbor of mine, happening to be in town some time since the published day, informed me that he saw a gentlewoman with her hoops half mounted in a balcony as they withdrew to the wall, to the great terror of the militia, who, he thinks, might attribute their irregular volleys to the formidable appearance of the ladies' petticoats. I assure you, sir, I have but little hopes of persuading my sex, by this letter utterly to relinquish the extravagant foolery and the indication of immodesty in this monstrous garb of theirs, but I would at least desire them to lessen the circumference of their hoops, and leave it with them to consider whether they would pay the rates or taxes that they ought to take up more room in the King's Highway than the men who yearly contribute to the support of the government. Now that I've had my say, I am your humble servant, Silence Do Good. Silence Dogood argues that obsessing over fashion and appearances signals a deeper moral problem in society. Do you agree, or is how we dress simply self-expression? What would she think of social media and influence or culture today? It's really good questions. And you know, the thing is, the more I read these, I'm like, oh man, these are super relevant, even though they were written, oh, 304 years ago. And if you are interested in learning a little bit more about Creative Actors Lab, you can go to our website, Creative ActorsLab.com, and that's all one word. Uh, we also have, in addition to the silence do good essays for Spectral Summit, we actually have dramatic fictional podcasts, and that has a high school newspaper reporter named Sierra who can see and talk to spirits, and she interviews historical figures from today's perspective. And so, again, if you'd like to look at that on our website, and that is spectral summit.com. And there are subscriptions starting at just$10 a month. Thank you again for listening, and we will see you next time in Ben Franklin's Universe. Have a great day.