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The Women Jefferson Loved (2010)

by Virginia Scharff(Favorite Author)

3.65 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0061227072 (ISBN13: 9780061227073)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Harper

review 1: First off, this book totally killed my Jefferson crush. Reading about his thoughts on women and their "place" was a total disappointment, but I suppose that's neither here no there as far as this book is concerned. What follows is totally off the top of my head and will most definitely need tweaking but I need to write it down now or I might forget.Where was I? Oh, yes, the real problem with this book is that if you're going to write about the Women Jefferson Loved, you shouldn't start the book by saying that all pertinent correspondence there might have been between Jefferson and his wife, and Jefferson and his family talking about his wife and or Sally Hemings was destroyed and therefore there is not much to go on. This is rather evident throughout the book. Everything i... mores conjecture as far as what kind of relationship Jefferson and his wife Martha might have had, a lot of it based on her expense records and gardening journals. Also, there's practically nothing concrete regarding Sally Hemings. Everything was a hypothesis as to what she might have felt about any given thing. What this book had plenty of though was letters between Jefferson and his daughters and perhaps the author would have done better to write about that. Or to rethink the description of the book. Must end this now because I've got to go. So, that's not much of a wrap up, is it? I will say that overall, I did enjoy it, just not what I was hoping for.
review 2: Much easier to read than Gordon-Reed's definitive study on the Hemings, plus much I didn't know about TJ's wife and daughters. It kind of left me wanting a little more depth, but as with anything dealing with Jefferson and the women in his life, there just isn't much to work with. I just never felt that I really got to know any of the women, but I did acquire some new insight into Jefferson's behavior. less

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