A Founding Mother

A Founding Mother: A Novel of Abigail Adams

63 pages2-hour read

Fiction

Novel

Adult

Published in 2026

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Themes

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes a discussion of gender discrimination, illness, death, pregnancy loss, child death, racism, emotional abuse, physical abuse, substance use, and addiction.

The Invisible Labor of Women

In A Founding Mother, Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie argue that the American Revolution and the establishment of the republic were fundamentally dependent on the uncredited and often dismissed labor of women. Through the life of Abigail Adams, the novel reveals a parallel, domestic revolution where women’s work in managing households, securing finances, and facilitating political discourse was essential to the nation’s survival. Abigail’s tireless efforts on the farm, her shrewd entrepreneurship, and her essential role as a political advisor and social diplomat demonstrate that the new nation’s success was built upon contributions rendered invisible by a patriarchal society that refused to acknowledge their value.

From the moment John Adams leaves for the Continental Congress, Abigail assumes the full weight of maintaining the family’s existence, a burden that goes far beyond simple housekeeping. She single-handedly runs the family farm in Braintree, contending with wartime scarcity, rampant inflation, and a destructive dysentery epidemic that sweeps through her household. This labor is a contribution to the revolutionary cause; by keeping the farm productive and her family solvent, she frees her husband to dedicate himself to the nation’s political formation. Her work is a constant, grueling battle against forces both natural and political. She drags buckets of water during a drought, confronts truculent tenants who refuse to help refugees, and melts down her own pewter spoons to make musket balls. This relentless effort, performed in isolation, forms the unacknowledged backbone of her husband’s public service.

Beyond managing existing resources, Abigail demonstrates remarkable financial acumen by creating new ones. To combat the economic chaos of the war, she establishes a successful mercantile business, recognizing the high value of scarce imported goods. She begins by asking John to send pins from Philadelphia, which she sells at a significant profit. Her enterprise expands as she partners with her uncle, Dr. Tufts, and her friend Mercy Otis Warren to trade in linens, tea, and other European goods. This venture is a strategic response to the nation’s economic instability and a clear display of her business intellect. However, the profits she earns are relegated to the status of “pin money,” a private fund she largely keeps secret. This secrecy emphasizes the societal perception of women’s economic activity as trivial, even when it is the very thing keeping a prominent family afloat.

Abigail’s invisible labor extends into the political and social spheres. During John’s long diplomatic missions in Europe, she becomes his most important source of intelligence from Massachusetts, using her extensive social network to gather information on public sentiment, military readiness, and political intrigue. She becomes his “eyes and ears” (64), providing subtle reports that are more valuable than official dispatches. Later, as the wife of the Vice President and President, her role becomes even more critical. She is responsible for establishing and managing the complex social world of the new capital, hosting levees and dinner parties that are essential for political networking and national unity. This work, which she funds largely from her own pocket, is a form of diplomacy. She acknowledges, “I, too, was representing our nation upon the world’s stage” (231). Though men like her husband conduct the formal business of state, the novel makes it clear that the republic’s social and political cohesion is woven together in the drawing rooms she expertly manages.

Marriage as an Unequal Partnership

While A Founding Mother portrays the marriage of Abigail and John Adams as a union of intellectual connection and genuine affection, it simultaneously critiques the institution of marriage in the 18th century as fundamentally unequal. The novel argues that even the most loving partnership was constrained by a legal and social framework that granted husbands absolute authority, rendering true equality impossible. Abigail’s persistent and often painful struggle for personal agency, financial autonomy, and a voice in her own life reveals that her partnership with John, for all its strengths, was an ongoing negotiation against a system designed to subordinate her. Her life illustrates the contradiction of a revolution fought for liberty by men who refused to extend that same principle to their own wives.

The starkest illustration of this inequality appears early in the narrative when Abigail famously implores John to “remember the ladies” (79) as he helps draft the new nation’s laws. Her plea is a serious political proposition, warning that women “are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation” (79). John’s response—dismissive laughter and a refusal to repeal the “masculine systems” that give husbands unlimited power—is a destructive blow. It reveals that even a man who values his wife’s intellect and counsel sees the legal subjugation of women as natural and non-negotiable. This exchange establishes the central conflict of their partnership: Abigail’s desire for recognition as an equal is constantly at odds with the legal reality that she is, in essence, her husband’s property.

A turning point in Abigail’s understanding of her marriage occurs during John’s diplomatic service in France. His letters, once warm and affectionate, become cruel and accusatory, lashing out at her for expressing loneliness and seeking reassurance. The emotional abuse in his writing forces Abigail to confront the precariousness of her position. Her friend Phoebe, a formerly enslaved woman, provides a stark analysis, comparing marriage to a form of bondage where a woman’s fate depends on having a “kind, loving master” (138) versus a cruel one, but an enslaver nonetheless. This realization shatters Abigail’s illusion of equality, prompting her to adopt a more guarded and pragmatic approach to her marriage. She learns to manage her husband’s ego and suppress her own needs, recognizing that her security depends not on her rights, but on his continued goodwill.

In response to her legal powerlessness, Abigail develops strategies to carve out her own sphere of autonomy, primarily through financial independence. Her successful mercantile business allows her to accumulate secret profits she refers to as “pin money,” a fund she controls outside of John’s knowledge. This financial freedom empowers her to make independent decisions, such as investing in land in Vermont by using Dr. Tufts as a proxy, an act legally forbidden to a married woman. Her ultimate assertion of selfhood comes in old age when she drafts her own will. Though legally invalid, as all her property belongs to John, she uses it to compel him to honor her wishes and bequeath her hard-won assets to her female relatives. In this final act, Abigail forces a de facto recognition of her rights, achieving in her personal life the equality the law denied her.

The Toll of Public Service on Family

In A Founding Mother, the grand, nation-building enterprise of the American Revolution is set against a backdrop of deep and destructive personal cost. The novel argues that dedicating one’s life to public service, however noble the cause, demands grueling family separations, the neglect of children, and irreversible domestic grief. The Adams family’s story is a chronicle of sacrifice, where the relentless demands of the country continually supersede the needs of the family. Through prolonged absences, emotional estrangement, and tragic loss, the narrative illustrates that the birth of the United States was paid for not just on the battlefield, but also within the fractured homes of its founders, where personal happiness was a casualty of political duty.

The most pervasive toll of John’s career is the near-constant separation from his family. His decades of service—in the Continental Congress, as a diplomat in Europe, and in the federal government—force him and Abigail to live apart for years at a time. This distance leaves Abigail to manage the farm and raise their children alone through war, famine, and disease. The separation strains their marriage to its breaking point, particularly when John’s cruel letters from France cause Abigail to question their entire partnership. For the children, their father becomes a distant, almost mythical figure. His long absences create a void that can never be fully filled, and his brief returns are often fraught with the awkwardness of reuniting with a family he barely knows. This recurring pattern of parting and reunion becomes the central tragedy of their family life, a sacrifice that leaves permanent emotional scars.

The children’s own lives are directly shaped and often damaged by the demands of their father’s career. The decision to take a young John Quincy and Charles to Europe is driven by the needs of John’s diplomatic mission. While John Quincy thrives, the experience is damaging for Charles. Left largely unsupervised in Spain and Holland, he develops habits that lead to his lifelong struggle with alcohol addiction and his reputation “as a beautiful, but bad man” (249). The younger son, Tommy, feels perpetually abandoned and suffers under the harsh care of his uncle, Reverend Shaw, living “in fear of his strap” (415) while his parents are abroad. The children’s emotional well-being and proper upbringing are consistently subordinated to the higher cause of the nation, a sacrifice with tragic, long-term consequences.

Ultimately, the price of public service is paid in grief. Abigail endures the deaths of two infant daughters—Susanna from illness and a stillborn baby she attributes to the stress of John breaking his promise to be home—without her husband’s immediate comfort. The most destructive loss is the death of their adult son Charles, whose alcohol addiction is a direct consequence of the instability and neglect fostered by his father’s career. John’s earlier renunciation of his son, and his absence at the time of Charles’s death, creates a rift in his marriage to Abigail. She is consumed by guilt and sorrow, feeling that her son was a casualty of their political life. The novel depicts how the great, historical achievements of the Adamses are shadowed by private, inconsolable losses, suggesting that the cost of building a nation is counted not just in political victories, but in personal loss.