Nancy Rubin Stuart's "Poor Richard's Women"

Nancy Rubin Stuart is an award-winning author whose nonfiction books focus upon women and social history. Her most recent book is Poor Richard's Women: Deborah Read Franklin and the Other Women Behind the Founding Father. Earlier books include Defiant Brides, named by the Wall Street Journal named one of the best five books on Revolutionary-era women, the acclaimed The Muse of the Revolution, and the national best-seller, American Empress.

As a journalist, Stuart’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Huffington Post, the Washington Post, the New England Quarterly, and national magazines. She serves as Executive Director of the Cape Cod Writers Center.

Stuart applied the “Page 99 Test” to Poor Richard's Women and reported the following:

After opening the book to page 99, a reader will discover Deborah Read Franklin’s obedient attitude to her husband, Ben, her meek acceptance of his approval of his London landlady Margaret Stevenson and her decision to behave politely in her role as the statesman’s wife. Further down the page Deborah again expresses her love for her husband and reveals gritty determination to preserve his reputation despite the ominous advances of a mob towards the Franklin home. In response to that news, Ben wrote “I honor much the spirit and courage you showed, and the prudent preparaitons you made in that {time} of danger.” The page concludes with Deborah’s promise to avoid anything that would cast Ben in a negative light by staying home alone. Nevertheless she does admit “you are not here to make me quite so {happy} and hopes “you are not to stay longer than the spring.”

The test works well in capturing the contradictory threads of Deborah’s personality, a deeply smitten woman pledged to honor her husband but one whose personal strengths enabled her to make decisions during his absence beyond the norm of a colonial wife. These are important events in the major part of the book which focus upon Deborah. However page 99 does not include Ben’s subsequent romances with more independent women who neither allowed nor tolerated the liberties he enjoyed with his wife.

Through the lens of his women’s correspondence with Ben, the book reveals that the founding father’s iconic mage as a man guided by discretion is overblown. Throughout his life he found women as fascinating as electricity – and as shocking and dangerous. Those who read Poor Richard's Women will discover a man who privately struggled with passion and prudence in his private relationships.

Visit Nancy Rubin Stuart's website.

--Marshal Zeringue