30 Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820)
Robert P. Wilson
Introduction
Judith Sargent was born into an elite family of merchants in Gloucester, Massachusetts, on May 1, 1751. Her family’s social position afforded her some formal education as a child, although limited due to her gender. Hungry for knowledge, however, young Judith Sargent took every opportunity to educate herself. The rise in literacy that began in the mid-18th century, and the fact that upper-class women were literate but largely inactive in (because barred from) public life, meant that publishers often catered to women readers. A variety of publications from both sides of the Atlantic were readily available, and a steady increase in the publication of women’s writing began to redefine the role of women in the public sphere. Inspired by other women writers like Catherine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft, Judith harbored ambitions of literary fame, writing poems, three plays, and a novel. She is best known to modern readers as an essayist who helped shape public dialogue about women’s changing relationship to men and to the nation in the early years of the American republic.
Judith Sargent married John Stevens, a fellow member of Gloucester’s merchant elite, in 1769. For Judith, the pairing was less than ideal, a decision she would later attribute to her youth and inexperience. She was frustrated that Stevens treated her more like a dependent than an equal, especially when it came to financial decisions. In 1786, bankrupt and facing debtor’s prison, John Stevens left the United States for the West Indies in a last-ditch effort to recoup his losses. He fell ill and died there the following year. Widowed and financially strained, Judith took up needlework and had to divide her late husband’s property among his creditors. While she was never destitute, growing up in an affluent family had made Judith acutely conscious of wealth, and her bouts with financial insecurity left her anxious about money for the rest of her life.
In 1788, Judith married John Murray, a Universalist preacher who had emigrated from England on the eve of the American Revolution. Reverend Murray was a charismatic speaker, and Judith initiated a letter correspondence with him after hearing him preach in Gloucester in 1774. Universalism was a progressive form of Christianity that challenged the Calvinist orthodoxies underlying religious tradition in New England since English Puritans first began colonizing Massachusetts in 1620. Universalists believed that Christ’s sacrifice secured redemption for all, not just a chosen few. Arriving in New England in the late 18th century, Universalism was linked to revolutionary principles like religious liberty and the separation of church and state. If taught to read, everyone, man or woman, could interpret the Bible for themselves. These struggles for religious liberty paved the way for critiques against what Judith called “the despotism of tradition” across all of social life. It