Warren, Mercy Otis (1728-1814)

Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814)

Sources

Historian, dramatist

Early Life. Born in West Barnstable, Massachusetts, Mercy Otis was the daughter of James Otis Sr., a merchant and lawyer who became a prominent figure in local politics. Her brother James Otis Jr. achieved even greater renown as a leader of the revolutionary resistance to Britain. James Warren, whom she married in 1754, was also a leader in that struggle. Resisting traditional limits to women’s public roles, Warren carried on the family tradition of political activism and eagerly took part in the political controversies of her day. An ardent supporter of the Revolution, like her brother and husband, she used writing as a vehicle to further her political views, seeking to win adherents to the revolutionary cause through her work as a playwright and propagandist.

Dramatic Works. Warren made clear her revolutionary sympathies in her first play, The Adulateur: A Tragedy (1773), which satirized the Tories as corrupt defenders of tyranny in contrast to the revolutionaries, who embodied virtuous patriotism. Warren followed this work with another play in a similar vein, The Group (1775). After the Revolution she continued writing plays, publishing two tragedies, The Sack of Rome and The Ladies of Castile, in her Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous (1790). Like her previous plays, these two works expressed her contemporary political opinions, in this case her concerns about the role of women in politics. In both plays she placed women at the center of political upheavals. Although she did not advocate formal political rights for women, she did not believe that women should divorce themselves from politics entirely. Through the characters in The Sack of Rome and The Ladies of Castile, Warren suggested that a healthy republic required politically conscious women who were willing to make sacrifices for the public good.

Historian of the Revolution. The culmination of Warren’s literary efforts was her three-volume History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution (1805). In this history Warren sought to do more than simply recapitulate the events of the Revolution. Embracing the didactic view of history that prevailed in the eighteenth century, Warren viewed her history as a source of moral examples that would influence the conduct of present and future generations. Concerned about what she saw as the postrevolutionary lapse from revolutionary principles, Warren hoped to provide historical models that would counteract this tendency. She analyzed the Revolution as a conflict between British corruption and American virtue, setting up an implicit contrast between the virtuous self-sacrifice of the revolutionaries and the degeneracy of her postrevolutionary contemporaries. Hoping this contrast would inspire them to imitate and revive the spirit that had effected the Revolution, she declared, “It is an unpleasing part of history, when ‘corruption begins to prevail, when degeneracy marks the manners of the people, and weakens the sinews of the state.’” She added, “If this should ever become the deplorable situation of the United States, let some unborn historian, in a far distant day, detail the lapse, and hold up the contrast between a simple, virtuous, and free people, and a degenerate, servile race of beings, corrupted by wealth, effeminated by luxury, impoverished by licentiousness, and become the automatons of intoxicated ambition.”

Later Life. The contemporary response to Warren’s history was mixed. Her critical portrayal of him inspired John Adams observe to Warren that “History is not the Province of Ladies.” For the most part, however, Warren’s contemporaries neglected her history altogether, and her work received only one lackluster review from the Panoplist. The History was Warren’s last major literary production before her death in 1814.

Sources

Lester Cohen, “Explaining the Revolution: Ideology and Ethics in Mercy Otis Warren’s Historical Theory,” William and Mary Quarterly, 37 (April 1980): 200–218;

Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, edited by Lester Cohen (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1988);

Rosemarie Zagarri, A Woman’s Dilemma: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution (Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1995).