78. Eve’s College Ready!:  Judith Sargent Murray’s “On the Equality of the Sexes” (S6E5)

What if women are naturally as intelligent as men, but refusing them an education is the reason men know more?  Seems like a no-brainer…and yet, in the late 1700’s, a woman had to point this out to “enlightened” men. 

That woman was Judith Sargent Murray, and to explain why women were just as intelligent as men, she had to address the Eve story. 

Her essay, “On the Equality of the Sexes,”  is a tour de force argument for women’s education.  Truth be told, it probably illustrates the real reason men didn’t want women to have an education:  they’d end up with a nation of women like Judith Sargent Murray, running intellectual circles around them.

Along the way, Sonja hopes there’s pudding in Heaven, and Vanessa delves into some very scientific rib-distance-from-head intelligence theory. 

REFERENCES

While we are not enough versed on Hebrew to completely evaluate Sargent Murray’s claim about serpent/seraph, even wikipedia suggests that she might be on to something.

Here is a link to the book Sonja mentions: A Terrible Intimacy: Interracial Life in the Slaveholding South by Melvin Patrick Ely. 

When Sonja mentions the use of pseudonyms in newspaper writing, that refers to our episode 70. Take the Rake to Court about the 1783 Sewing Girl Rape Case.

We also reference these two episodes in which we interview Elizabeth Lesser and Sharon McMahon.