Project Questions

1. How does the characterization of England change from Hannah Callender’s diary entries of 1758 through Hannah Griffitt's poem of ten years later?
2. How can you trace the influence of English literature and politics on the writings of Hannah Callender, Susanna Wright, and Hannah Griffitts?
3. What are some of the tensions between men and women discussed by the three female authors featured in this unit? What do they write are the tensions between ideas about what men and women should be and do and how they should relate to one another?
4. Central Question: What does the evidence of elite women’s reading and writing in eighteenth-century Philadelphia tell us about gender and politics on the eve of the American Revolution?