{"id":32044,"date":"2020-08-18T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/alumni\/?p=32044"},"modified":"2021-11-17T11:02:51","modified_gmt":"2021-11-17T16:02:51","slug":"the-traitors-wife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kzoo.edu\/alumni\/the-traitors-wife\/","title":{"rendered":"The Traitor\u2019s Wife: An Innocent? or a Co-Conspirator?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

That question is crucial, says Professor of History Charlene Boyer-Lewis \u201987, to a deeper understanding of the American revolutionary war era, a time of instability for much more than politics. Exactly what role did Margaret Shippen Arnold\u2014wife of notorious traitor Benedict Arnold\u2014play in the plot to deliver West Point to the British Army? Turns out a very active one, notwithstanding the many decades of her presumed innocence. A role active enough to be worthy of a post-war annuity of 500 pounds\u2014for espionage services rendered at great personal risk. Boyer-Lewis contends that a revision of Margaret\u2019s role from the margin of this spy story to its center more accurately illuminates the cultural upheaval that was part of the revolutionary era, a tumult that included a fluidity of identity that was eroding the rigidity and constraint of weakening gender roles. Like Margaret, many women of the era were strong actors who made political choices separate of their husbands. Margaret\u2019s story shows the war transpired in households as much as on battlefields. The spy plot\u2019s crisis of exposure reveals a capable woman who, in a \u201cperformance without faking,\u201d exploits a gendered thinking that her leading role in the story is in the very process of revolutionizing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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