Dolley Payne Todd Madison: What I Know Going In

She saved George Washington, the painting not the person, from the burning White House during the War of 1812. I imagine that’s what most people associate with her; at least, it's all I knew about her until early in graduate school when we read Parlor Politics by Catherine Algor. In that book, Algor tells us much more about how Madison (and other political wives of the time) used her position as a woman and hostess to further her own political ends. Dolley Madison was also know to have taken on some hostess duties for Thomas Jefferson when he was president, especially at those parties where women were present. Finally, because Dolley Madison was the first official First Lady to reside in the White House, she did much to truly define what that role would be.   

I will be learning about Dolley Madison's life from the book Strength And Honor: The Life of Dolley Madison by Richard N. Côté.  

Image taken from: http://www.aadl.org/catalog/record/1240152

It was the only true biography of Madison's life that I could find, and my local library only owns one copy. Someone had checked it out the day before I went looking, so I have been waiting more than a month to get my turn (they returned it several days late). It should be coming in to fill my hold any day now.   

Jefferson and Women in Summary

"In all his dealings with women, from Rebecca Burwell to Maria Cosway, and even in the outpouring of grief after the death of his wife, Jefferson had always put himself and his needs first.  With Sally Hemings, his possession, his control, and her submission were complete" (Kukla, 129) 

I think that brief excerpt from Kukla's book pretty much sums up everything you need to know about Thomas Jefferson and his relationships with women. Not only did these relationships fulfill purely selfish motives for Jefferson; he was generally put off by any woman who did not "know her place." He even went so far as to say that the reason France was struggling through revolution because French women, who were more outspoken politically, directly threatened French democracy.   

Kukla's Chapter on Sally Hemings goes into interesting rationalization for why Jefferson kept up his liaison with Hemings as a response to contemporary medical thought of the time that recommended regular sexual intercourse with women and how Jefferson could overcome his racism when it came to the Hemings family because of strained definitions of "white" among those with mixed-race heritage. Otherwise, the chapter spends most of its time illustrating how the likely conception dates of Hemings's children corresponded to times when Jefferson would have been away from his political duties in the capital and back at Monticello.   

In the end, while titled Mr. Jefferson's Women, Kukla's book tells more about Jefferson's thoughts on women than the women themselves. It leaves the reader wanting to know more about the actual women in Jefferson's life, not only those he loved, but those he was related to as well. What was his mother like? What were his daughters like and what did they think about him, especially Martha the only child to live beyond 25? But from the book we do get a clear sense that Jefferson was uncomfortable with women except when they were married or otherwise owned and under control. He saw little use for them even in his White House where he did much of the entertaining himself in order to better control the political interactions taking place. I wonder if he would have relinquished that duty to his wife even if she had survived to his presidency.