The Secret Soldier
The Secret Soldier
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Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, graphic violence, and gender discrimination.
Gender Discrimination as a Barrier to Independence
In McGovern’s The Secret Soldier, the life of Deborah Sampson illustrates how 18th-century American society constructed gender as a significant barrier to female independence. The narrative shows that women who sought travel, adventure, and greater control over their own lives faced expectations that directed them toward marriage and domestic responsibilities. Women’s legal rights, economic opportunities, and access to education were restricted, limiting the choices available to them. By adopting a male identity to enlist in the Continental Army, Deborah demonstrates how gender expectations restrict opportunities that her abilities allow her to pursue successfully. Her success as Robert Shurtliff, a respected soldier, exposes the limitations imposed on women by these social expectations.
The book establishes early on that Deborah herself encounters such restrictions. Even her access to education is restricted by assumptions about what girls need to learn. While the Thomas boys attend school, Deborah has to borrow their books and study on her own, and some people believe that too much reading can give girls “brain fever.” As she reaches adulthood, her opportunities remain limited by expectations about women’s work and future roles. Her own mother reinforces these expectations by asking why Deborah isn’t marrying “like girls are supposed to do” (26). Marriage itself brings further legal restrictions. The text notes that a married woman cannot own property, as the law dictates that everything she has “belong[s] to her husband” (27). These restrictions show how gender shapes women’s access to education, work, property, and the freedom to determine the course of their own lives.
Faced with these restrictive norms, Deborah’s desire for travel and adventure leads her to question why opportunities open to men are closed to her. She dreams of seeing great cities and having adventures, a life beyond the limited choices available to her. Military service offers men without wealth an opportunity to travel, yet the army is open only to men. Deborah responds to this restriction by deciding to disguise herself and enlist. The narrative connects this decision directly to her awareness of what she has already achieved despite expectations about women: “Wasn’t I a teacher without ever going to school? Wasn’t I a good teacher? Why not a soldier?” (28). She binds her chest, dresses as a man, practices how to move and speak, and eventually enlists under the name Robert Shurtliff. Her disguise gives her access to a role that she cannot enter openly as a woman. Her secret plan is therefore closely tied to the gender restrictions that exclude women from military service.
Once enlisted as Robert, Deborah demonstrates her ability to perform a role from which women are excluded. She endures grueling marches, participates in dangerous raids, and earns the respect of her fellow soldiers and officers. Her fellow soldiers come to like her, while General Paterson hears of Robert as a quiet and brave soldier. He eventually chooses Deborah as his personal orderly, a position the book describes as “a high honor” (50). Her success in the army demonstrates that the restrictions placed on women do not correspond to Deborah’s capabilities. By serving as Robert, she enters a sphere of experience and responsibility that gender restrictions had made inaccessible to her. Her military service therefore reinforces the book’s broader argument that social expectations about gender can restrict opportunities regardless of an individual’s ability to perform the roles from which they’re excluded.
The Burden of Concealment
While Deborah’s male disguise in The Secret Soldier grants her access to opportunities unavailable to her as a woman, maintaining this concealment places significant physical and emotional demands on her. Her life as Robert Shurtliff requires continued vigilance because situations involving recognition, physical scrutiny, or medical treatment could expose her secret. The narrative emphasizes that concealment becomes a burden, requiring Deborah to manage her fear and conceal injuries that could reveal that she’s a woman. Her anxiety about being recognized, her efforts to avoid scrutiny among the soldiers, and her decision to remove a bullet from her own leg show how protecting her secret increasingly affects her behavior and well-being. Concealment gives Deborah access to military life while limiting how openly she can seek help or explain her actions to those around her.
The burden of concealment also appears in Deborah’s recurring fear of discovery. On her initial journey to enlist, a chance encounter with a neighbor causes her heart to pound “like a drum” (35), and she hides in the woods to avoid being recognized. Later, after fainting during the difficult march to West Point, she wakes wondering whether anyone has discovered that she’s a woman. Protecting her secret continues to shape how she behaves around the other soldiers. She refrains from the soldiers’ wrestling contests and other games and chooses to “stay by herself as much as possible” (40). Although the other soldiers like her, maintaining her disguise requires Deborah to remain guarded and to limit her participation in activities that might draw attention to her identity.
The clearest physical cost of her concealment emerges after she is shot during a skirmish with Tories. Wounded in the neck and leg, Deborah fears that receiving treatment for her leg will expose her secret and initially asks to be left behind. She tells a fellow soldier who tries to help her, “Leave me, […] I am going to die anyway!” (43). At the hospital, she conceals the wound in her leg and, once alone, uses a pocketknife to dig the bullet out herself. Her need to avoid discovery therefore prevents her from receiving medical treatment for the wound and forces her to treat it herself. The consequences continue after the immediate danger has passed: The book states that her leg never heals properly, and the injury causes her pain years after her military service ends. In this way, maintaining her disguise carries a lasting physical cost that extends beyond her time in the army.
Concealment also limits what Deborah can reveal about her life to those closest to her. When she writes to her mother, she doesn’t disclose that she has enlisted, saying only that she has “found work in a large family” (40). The burden of secrecy continues until illness finally leads to its discovery. Dr Binney learns that Deborah is a woman while treating her for a fever, but he keeps her secret. When General Paterson later learns the truth, Deborah asks what her fate will be if she admits that she’s a woman. Despite her fear of the consequences, Paterson tells her that she has “nothing to fear” and expresses his admiration and respect (53). Deborah then admits that she is Deborah Sampson and says, “I have no desire to hide the truth any longer” (54). Her response shows how strongly concealment has shaped her experience: Once Paterson knows the truth and assures her that she has nothing to fear, Deborah no longer needs to conceal her identity from him. The eventual disclosure therefore brings an end to a burden that has required vigilance, restricted what she could reveal to others, and, in the case of her wounded leg, carried lasting physical consequences.
The Lasting Drive for Adventure
In The Secret Soldier, Deborah’s desire for adventure persists from her youth into adulthood, even as her experiences change what she understands adventure to mean. Her early curiosity and desire to see places beyond her familiar surroundings eventually lead her to pursue adventure through military service. Once she experiences the violence and suffering of military life, however, she stops thinking of war as an adventure. This change doesn’t end her desire to travel and seek new experiences. The narrative demonstrates that her wish to travel, seek new experiences, and see what lies “beyond the next hill” continues after her military service (58). Deborah’s changing experiences therefore show both the persistence and the development of her desire for adventure across her life.
Even before she conceives of enlisting, Deborah’s curiosity extends beyond her immediate surroundings. As a young woman working for the Thomas family, she’s filled with questions about the natural world, wondering about the stars, the sun, and the moon. Her interest also extends beyond the world she knows; she longs to travel and see the great cities of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. As she considers her future, Deborah knows that girls are expected to marry and raise families, but she wants to experience “other things—daring things” before marrying (27). Her decision to join the army develops from this desire for travel and adventure. When she considers that a poor young man who wants to travel and seek adventure can join the army, she begins to ask why she can’t do the same. Military service thus becomes Deborah’s first opportunity to pursue the adventurous life she has imagined.
After the war, Deborah marries Benjamin Gannet and raises a family, but her desire for adventure continues. The book explicitly states, “Deborah still longed for adventure” (58). As people begin moving west to Ohio, where there is good land, Deborah wants her family to move there as well. Benjamin prefers to remain on the Massachusetts farm because the land means a great deal to him and he has worked hard on it. Although the family stays, Deborah’s wish to move west shows that the desire for travel and new experiences that influenced her decision to enlist has persisted into another stage of her life. Her marriage and family therefore do not end her interest in what lies “beyond the next hill” (58); that interest eventually finds another outlet when she begins traveling to give public talks.
Ultimately, Deborah finds another way to pursue her desire for travel and new experiences in middle age. At 41, she begins giving public talks about her experiences, becoming “one of the first women in this country to travel alone and give talks for money” (61). She dons her military uniform once again, travels to major cities, makes her own travel arrangements, and takes care of every detail herself. Her changed understanding of adventure is also evident in what she tells her audiences: Although she recounts her military experiences, she speaks against war. Her lecture tour therefore gives her desire for travel and new experiences another outlet while reflecting what she has learned from the military service she once pursued as an adventure. The experience also reveals that adventure and family remain important to her at the same time: As the tour continues, Deborah increasingly misses her children, grows tired of traveling, and eventually returns home. Her later life thus shows that her desire for adventure endures, even as experience changes how she pursues it and what she understands adventure to mean.
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