Jill Lepore spoke about Jane Franklin, her relationship with her brother Benjamin Franklin, and gender equality issues during nineteenth century at a lecture for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Humanities Without Boundaries Flagship Lecture Series Thursday.
Lepore is an award-winning scholar of early American history, a staff writer for the New Yorker, a professor at Harvard University as well as the author of various books and essays.
According to Lepore, Jane Franklin and her brother had a very close relationship, demonstrated by Jane receiving 13 pairs of spectacles from Benjamin, as well as many letters from him. In fact, Lepore said Benjamin wrote more letters to Jane than any other person.
Lepore said she believes Benjamin taught Jane how to write, which would have been very unique for the time period. Lepore said women were often taught how to read and knit, but writing was a skill that was almost exclusively taught to men.
Lepore noted the first paper Benjamin is presumed to have published, under the name Silence Dogood, was likely written by Jane. The paper included a personal account of women’s education and reading.
Jane married at the age of 15 and spent her life caring for her 12 children in addition to watching over her parents and husband. Lepore said because of the gender inequality present during the era in which Jane lived, she was unable to use her intelligence or reading and writing skills to their fullest potential.
Rachel Gross, a graduate student studying nineteenth and twentieth century history at UW-Madison, said Lepore “has a fan club with good reason because not anyone can command an audience in the way she does.” Gross said Lepore’s lecture was “excellent.”
Austin Grey, who graduated from UW-Madison last year, also said he found the lecture “very interesting,” even though he studied theater, not history.
Lepore’s lecture is the first of many the Humanities Without Boundaries will offer as part of its Flagship Lecture Series.
