After her mother died, Martha accompanied Jefferson to Paris, attended a convent school, learned to speak French fluently, and absorbed France’s antipathy to slavery. He saw little use in educating females, who were not permitted entrance to the University of Virginia, which he founded. Jefferson’s enlightened ideas about education extended only to men. Kerrison draws from those works as well as abundant historical and archival sources to portray “the benefits and perils” of each daughter’s experiences. As the author acknowledges, Jefferson’s long affair with Hemings has been well-documented by Annette Gordon-Reed and Monticello historian Lucia Stanton. Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South, 2005) illuminates women’s experiences in early America through the lives of Thomas Jefferson’s three daughters: Martha and Maria, his children by his wife, and Harriet Hemings, the offspring-one of four surviving children-of his relationship with the slave Sally Hemings. The circumscribed paths of women’s lives emerge from a deeply researched history.
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