Extraordinary Lives: The Art and Craft of American Biography

by William Zinsser

Louisa Adams even wrote bitter plays while she endured her White House captivity. There was one, for instance, called Suspicion, or Persecuted Innocence, which contained these lines: “Men ever dread the weakness of our softer sex, but ‘tis in the hour of peril that woman displays the energy of her nature and proves herself the noble helpmate of creation’s lord.” The word helpmate intrigued Louisa, who, when she was still in the White House, wrote: “Man’s interpretation of the word ‘helpmate’ as used in the Bible means this: Women made to cook his dinner, wash his clothes, gratify his sensual appetites, and thank him and love him for permission to drudge through life at the mercy of his caprices. Is this the interpretation intended by the Creator, the father of all mercy?” A deeply religious person herself, she often thought about the prevailing notion that heaped guilt and inferiority only on women because of Eve and the apple. As Louisa wrote, “The curse of pain in childbirth and the cares attendant in the rearing of wayward children, this was the punishment annexed to her fault.” Because of this atonement, Louisa believed that women didn’t deserve “the undermining scorn of her companion who deliberately partook of her sin while he is said to have possessed the Master Mind.”