Locke's philosophical theory is surely rather solid material, a kind indeed which probably not many college women of the twentieth century are familiar with. Add to these various intellectual pursuits of hers the highly thorough study she made of agriculture, her genuinely scientific experiments in the rotation and selection of crops, and her practical and successful management of three large plantations, and we may well conclude that here was a colonial woman with a mind of her own, and a mind fit for something besides feminine trifles and graces.
Jane Turell, a resident of Boston during the first half of the eighteenth century, was another whose interest in literature and other branches of higher education was certainly not common to the women of the period. Hear the narrative of the rather astonishing list of studies she undertook, and the zeal with which she pursued her research:
"Before she had seen eighteen, she had read, and 'in some measure' digested all the English poetry and polite pieces in prose, printed and manuscripts, in her father's well furnished library.... She had indeed such a thirst after knowledge that the leisure of the day did not suffice, but she spent whole nights in reading...."
"I find she was sometimes fired with a laudable ambition of raising the honor of her sex, who are therefore under obligations to her; and all will be ready to own she had a fine genius, and is to be placed among those who have excelled."
"...What greatly contributed to increase her knowledge, in divinity, history, physic, controversy, as well as poetry, was her attentive hearing most that I read upon those heads through the long evenings of the winters as we sat together."[62]
Mrs. Adams was still another example of that rare womanliness which could combine with practical domestic ability a taste for high intellectual pursuits. During the Revolutionary days in the hour of deepest anxiety for the welfare of her husband and of her country, she wrote to Mr. Adams: "I have taken a great fondness for reading Rollin's Ancient History since you left me. I am determined to go through with it, if possible, in these days of solitude."[63] And again in a letter written on December 5, 1773, to Mercy Warren, she says: "I send with this the first volume of Molière and should be glad of your opinion of the plays. I cannot be brought to like them. There seems to me to be a general want of spirit. At the close of every one, I have felt disappointed. There are no characters but what appear unfinished; and he seems to have ridiculed vice without engaging us to virtue.... There is one negative virtue of which he is possessed, I mean that of decency.... I fear I shall incur the charge of vanity by thus criticising an author who has met with so much applause.... I should not have done it, if we had not conversed about it before."[64]
Evidently, at least a few of those colonial dames who are popularly supposed to have stayed at home and "tended their knitting" were interested in and enthusiastically conversed about some rather classic authors and rather deep questions. Mrs. Grant has told us of the aunt of General Philip Schuyler, a woman of great force of character and magnetic personality: "She was a great manager of her time and always contrived to create leisure hours for reading; for that kind of conversation which is properly styled gossiping she had the utmost contempt.... Questions in religion and morality, too weighty for table talk, were leisurely and coolly discussed [In the garden]."[65]
Again, Mrs. Grant pays tribute to her mental ability as well as to her intelligent interest in vital questions of the hour, in the following statement: "She clearly foresaw that no mode of taxation could be invented to which they would easily submit; and that the defense of the continent from enemies and keeping the necessary military force to protect the weak and awe the turbulent would be a perpetual drain of men and money to Great Britain, still increasing with the increased population."[66]
There were indeed brilliant minds among the women of colonial days; but for the most part the women of the period were content with a rather small amount of intellectual training and did not seek to gain that leadership so commonly sought by women of the twentieth century. Practically the only view ahead was that of the home and domestic life, and the whole tendency of education for woman was, therefore, toward the decidedly practical.