Sure, Patricia Brady is an engaging storyteller. Like in her biography of Martha Washington, she gives a well-written tale that weaves the lives of the Jacksons deeply into the context of the time. But we learn so much more about Andrew Jackson than Rachel Jackson in A Being So Gentle: The Frontier Love Story of Rachel and Andrew Jackson. I felt like Rachel was only presented on the margins and passively, almost exclusively with actions and events happening to her rather than by her. Reading this story after Louisa Thomas's complicated and complete presentation of Louisa Adams, I was a bit let down.
Brady gives us a true frontier love story but told in relatively broad strokes and filled with the antics and ambitions of Andrew Jackson with Rachel Donelson Robards Jackson as not much more than a supporting character. We learn about the harrowing westward journey of the Donelsons, when Rachel was little more than 11 or 12, from Virginia to become one of the founding families of Tennessee. We get a general sense of what filled the days of a frontier woman and are told that Rachel was social and flirtatious, a good dancer with a basic education. We are told that this easy sociability was part of the breakdown of her marriage to a jealous Lewis Robards. In comes Andrew Jackson, boarder with the Donelson family, to "save" Rachel from this unhappy and reputedly violent marriage. Certainly, Rachel makes the decision that she is unhappy in her marriage to Robards and actively chooses to self-divorce and live as a married couple with Andrew Jackson. But the story presented here focuses so much on Andrew Jackson's actions to legitimize his relationship with Rachel and so little on what Rachel thought or did as part of the situation. In many parts, it reads like Andrew Jackson is making business dealings and doing crazy things – including duels to defend Rachel's honor – and Rachel, referring to herself as Rachel Jackson well before legal divorce and marriage to Andrew, just goes along for the ride.
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| Image from Wiki Media Commons |
There are moments when we get more of a sense of who Rachel was. We learn that she was a devoted and adoring mother who was concerned that Andrew was not adequately present as a father to their adopted son. She was fearful during Andrew's time at war, wished he would stay home and live a family life as a farmer, and was happiest during the brief time when Andrew had "retired" to the Hermitage before his first presidential campaign. I wish we had learned more about how even with her discontent, she supported Andrew's military and political ambitions by maintaining the farm and business. Instead, Brady lingers on Rachel's purely feminine influence: "Rachel supported her husband's aspirations . . . Her role was to sympathize, to listen, to bring him peace at home"(196). We probably see Rachel as most active and interesting when Brady describes her deep devotion to the Presbyterian faith. During her six months in Florida while Andrew served as its first governor, Rachel went so far as to impose fines against Sabbath breakers in Pensacola because she was so uncomfortable with the dominance of Catholicism in the formerly Spanish colony. Still, I wish we had learned more. Even when dealing with the attempts to slander Rachel and Andrew during his second presidential campaign by attacking Rachel's virtue, we get almost no sense of how Rachel responded to the attacks. She is described as simply left "exhausted and sick at heart" (210) while we learn all about the steps Andrew takes to nullify the allegations and defend his beloved's honor.
We simply do not get enough of Rachel's voice, thoughts, persona. Besides her decision to leave an unhappy marriage and live as married to another without legal sanction, we see Rachel Jackson as not much more than a stereotypical woman of the frontier elite. Even self-divorce was described as a relatively common and accepted practice at the time. I hate to begrudge a scholar who may have had limited sources with which to work, or who is working with a story that perhaps really is just that typical, but neither of those restraints are always made clear. And without that explanation, we get a pretty standard story of man who loved a woman, took her with him to marry him, pursued his aspirations while ignoring any complaints she may have had, and who expressed his love mostly by fighting (both verbally and violently) to defend his woman's honor. There are some lovely sentiments presented from the love letters between Andrew and Rachel, but not nearly enough to get a true sense of their love and relationship and certainly not enough to fully understand who Rachel Jackson was. I, for one, hope that the "first scholarly biography of Rachel Jackson" that Brady mentions Ann Toplovich, executive director of the Tennessee Historical Society, is working on (239) will be published soon.
