“Benjamin Franklin fought for his learning, letter by letter, book by book, candle by candle. This is a brilliant book, which offers a well-sourced history and biography of an everyday woman of 18th-century American woman as well as the contrast of a gifted woman’s lack of opportunity compared to her famed brother. Her descriptions of the battles raging around Boston in April 1775 and fears that the fighting will come into the town are particularly chilling. She was more devoutly religious than her brother, and chided him for that, but also relates some interesting perspective on the political debates of the time. As the title states, Lepore also relates Jane’s opinions. Building on these, Lepore uses the writings of friends and relatives as well as women in similar positions at the time to build the story of Jane Franklin.
There’s only a small amount of Jane’s writing that survives, her correspondence with Benjamin and some other relatives as well as her Book of Ages where she recorded the births and deaths of family members. Later, he would pay for a house in the North End of Boston where she would live her final year.
There’s a heart-touching moment in their history when Benjamin brings Jane to Philadelphia to offer her a safe place to live during the Revolutionary Way. Jane marries young, has many children, struggles through poverty, and sees many of her children die, but she perserves. From that point on the siblings would see one another very infrequently but remain close through correspondence. Benjamin recognized Jane’s intelligence and teaches her reading and writing until he leaves Boston at the age of 17. Jane was the youngest of the Franklin children, six years younger than Benjamin, and they were very close. Jill Lepore, one of my favorite historians, addresses the question put forth by Virginia Woolf regarding about Shakespeare’s sister being equally brilliant but lacking the opportunity due to her sex through the history of Benjamin Franklin’s sister Jane Franklin Mecom. Publication Info: Vintage (October 1, 2013) Title: Book of Ages : the Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin
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