Through examining Martha’s intellectual trajectory and her world of readings, we can draw a conclusion that Martha was a real enlightened Christian. Born in a political family, she got opportunities to accept enlightened ideas. Compared with other ladies who were living in the same period, Martha was lucky to go abroad and read books written by European enlightened thinkers. Meanwhile, through continuing letter connections with her father and family members, she directly accepted political instructions during the turbulent era. On the other hand, following God’s instructions, she read the Bible and obeyed the rules and disciplines of Christianity and became a model of female excellence. For Martha, religion and enlightenment both worked on her and they were compatible with each other.
However, we should notice the fact that Christianity played much more important role in Martha’s life. Martha read books written by European Enlightenment thinkers, but she did not accept their radical ideas and became a radical woman. She read John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding rather than Two Treatises on Government. She read Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile rather than The Social Contract. For Martha, both Locke and Rousseau’s books served for her children’s education rather than for her own enlightenment, because she firstly considered that she should be a good mother rather than an enlightened woman. In an era when American revolutionaries were reading Locke and Rousseau’s revolutionary theories, it was so ridiculous that Martha were not interested in their radical political theories.
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