abigail adams
...Christianity enabled her to get through some of the most difficult times in her life. After her marriage to John Adams she took on Christian femininity as the pattern of her every day life. Abigail realized that God had made women for a different reason than He had made men, basically to become a mother and have children. Throughout her husband’s absence she took God with her and “reached a further understanding of who she was,” (p. 25). She was born female and had accepted the roles of which she would play in life. Each Sunday Abigail and her family attended church. Sunday was her favorite day of the week. “The family seldom missed driving the six miles to the dissenting chapel at Hackney to hear Dr. Richard Price,” (p.110). Abigail was able to establish her use of her profound faith while listening to Price’s sermons. Abigail and John shared the beliefs of Christianity. But John thought Christianity as theoretical and educational; for Abigail it was more private and practical. She was good for John in this aspect because she taught him that “religious faith must be emotionally as well as intellectually satisfying,” (p.145). Becoming a wife and mother was a challenge for Abigail. At age 17 she was still uncertain that she would ever find a husband. Then John Adams, a 27 year old lawyer, who had come from a good upbringing entered her life. By the end of 1761 the two of them had begun to think seriously of one another. John had never met anybody like Abigail, who, in his eyes was “prudent, modest, delicate, soft, sensible, obliging, active, and with all this physically passionate,” (p15). He was in love with her. They were married in the fall of 1764 in the Weymouth church house. “Her sudden pregnancy had dampened the joys of Abigail’s first year of marriage,” (p22). In the second year of her marriage to John “the tender feeling of a parent” wiped away any frustrations. She was blessed with a baby girl, who was named Nabby. Abigail was depressed at the begining of her marriage to John because he so often had to leave on business, which would be the beginning of many months and even years apart. John, was frequently, for the next few years, out of town leaving the misses to stay at home and do the duties of a wife and mother. In 1766 she was pregnant again. Abigail visited the Weymouth church house to help her loneliness subside while her husband away. She turned to her religion for support. Her first baby boy was born in 1767. And at the end of 1768 she gave birth to her third child but died at birth. A second son was born at the end of May of 1770. And a third son came along in 1772. “Abigail Adams reflected on the possibility of failure with her own children,” (p31). At the beginning of each day she read a chapter from the Bible to help guide their lives down the right path. By 1776 the husband’s long-drawn-out absences had begun to generate slight changes in their relationship. “Abigail was prepared to accept this developing view that the enlightened wife and mother, working in the private world of the home, would be the main instrument for the inculcation of those virtues essential for the survival of a free republic,” (p52). Abigail always supported anything John did or wanted to do, this is what made her such a good supporter of him. “But she took an equal share of credit for his fame,” (p.83). Abigail thought that since she sacrificed her peace and happiness for the betteter of the country that she thought it ws only fair she got partial credit. Although she supported him, she often felt depressed during their separations. As her children g...