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Responding to Advice From Her Father About How To Behave as a Wife
Digital History ID 4215

Author:   Eliza Lucas
Date:1742

Annotation: This letter was written in 1742 in response to her father's concern that Eliza would try to run her husband's affairs. Fortunately, her husband, Charles Pinckney, the speaker of the South Carolina Assembly, did not try to force Eliza to retreat to her "proper province."


Document: I am greatly obliged to you for your very good advice in my present happy relation. I think it entirely reasonable, and 'tis with great truth that I assure you 'tis not more my duty than my inclination to follow it; for making it the business of my life to please a man of Mr. Pinckney's merit even in triffles, I esteem a pleasing task; and I am well assured the acting out of my proper province and invading his, would be an inexcusable breach of prudence; as his superiour understanding, (without any other consideration,) would point him to dictate, and leave me nothing but the easy task of obeying.

Source: The Letterbook of Eliza Lucas Pinckney (1972). Edited by Elise Pinckney, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.

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