Judith Sargent Murray and Anne Bradstreet

Judith Sargent Murray

A prominent early American feminist and playwright, Judith Sargent Murray was best known as one of the leading female essayists of the late 18th century.

Born on May 1, 1751, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, the eldest daughter of a wealthy seafaring merchant, Judith Sargent, unlike most young women at that time, was relatively well educated. Her civic-minded father encouraged his intellectually gifted daughter to study with her brother's tutor, and to share her brother's Latin, Greek, and mathematics books as he prepared to attend Harvard University. In 1769, 18-year-old Judith married John Stevens, a ship's captain with a penchant for gambling, and soon began writing verse.

In 1779 Murray composed her first essay, "On the Equality of the Sexes," a cogent feminist statement in which she argued that, in order to become self-sufficient and productive, young women should have the same access to formal education as young men. The ideal republican woman, she wrote, should not only be a "sensible and informed" mother and wife, but also capable of intellectual and economic independence. The essay was not published until 1790, when it appeared in the Massachusetts Magazine.

Using the pseudonym Constantia, Murray published her poems in several literary magazines. In 1784 her essay "Encouraging a Degree of Self-Complacency, Especially in Female Bosoms," a passionate plea for women's rights, appeared in Gentleman and Lady's Town and Country Magazine. Women, she insisted, were destined for more than just "contemplating … the mechanism of a pudding, or the sewing of the seams of a garment." She also warned young women not to rush into marriage too young, as she had done, and to join her in "a new era in female history."

In 1788, two years after her first husband died in the West Indies, where he had fled to escape his debts, Judith Sargent Stevens married John Murray, a minister and founder of the Universalist Church in America. The couple, who had two children, only one of whom survived infancy, moved to Boston, where Murray wrote about the virtues of Universalist teachings while continuing to publish her poetry. She completed a series of about 100 essays, which were very popular and appeared from 1790 to 1794 in the Massachusetts Magazine. Most of them concerned the condition of women or the need to be patriotic by supporting the newly formed republic; they were signed "The Gleaner" and included a sentimental quasinovel written by Murray's male persona, Mr. Vigillus, a kindly, sensitive man who is raising an adopted daughter.

One of the first American women to promote theater, Murray also wrote two plays to "expand the quantity, as well as the quality" of women's literature. The Medium, or Virtue Triumphant (1795) was the first American play staged in Boston and was followed a year later by The Traveller Returned. Neither play was successful.

In order to raise money to take care of her daughter and her husband, who was ill, Murray in 1798 put together The Gleaner, a three-volume collection of her essays, plays, and ...