Silence Dogood Letter #12

Kally Morse

Professor Allison

CI-H133: Creating America

3 February 2016

  Silence Dogood Letter #12

During his apprenticeship at James Franklin’s printing shop, Benjamin Franklin took up a pseudonym by the name of Silence Dogood. This identity was used as a means to get published in his brother’s paper, The New England Courant, as sixteen-year-old Franklin knew that his older brother would never publish his works.

Silence Dogood was a fictional widow of a “Reverend master” with three children. Franklin’s pseudonym penned fourteen letters to the New England Courant between April and October of 1722. The essays focused on various topics, including drunkenness, women’s education and many other talking points of that time, eliciting positive receptions from the Courant’s audience.

In Silence Dogood’s twelfth letter, Franklin discusses drunkenness as a vice and shares Silence’s observations of it in a rather ironic tone. He claims that those who drink in moderation do so for the “Talent of a ready Utterance” where they’re able to discover their thoughts in a comprehensible manner. Franklin states that the consumption of alcohol “ does not improve our Faculties, but it enables us to use them,” and notes that alcohol can be used to help people become successful orators.

However, Franklin has a different view for those who drink for the sake of drunkenness. He claims that those who consume excess do not receive enjoyment, but rather descend “to Impertinence and Nonsense” while drunk.  He asserts that drunkards maintain “only the Shape of a Man, and [act] the Part of a Beast.” Franklin continues to observe the ways in which being intoxicated can affect a person’s demeanor. For example, he states, “’tis strange to see Men of a regular Conversation become rakish and profane when intoxicated with Drink” and continues with observations of how liquor affects religious views and the imagination. He identifies that “the Effects of Liquor are various, so are the Characters given to its Devourers.”

Franklin explains that words such as “boozey, cogey, tipsey, fox’d, merry, mellow, fuddl’d, groatable” have been invented – and are invented daily – by drunkards as substitutes for the actual word “drunk.” These words are listed so drunk men, normally of “Sobriety and Temperance” are able to escape any accusations of being drunk by labeling themselves with a phrase that Franklin lists in this letter.

24 thoughts on “Silence Dogood Letter #12”

  1. I like how you referenced Franklin’s work in your review. Overall, I’d say that the essay is done quite well, with good quotations and analysis of the paper. However, I noticed that you didn’t mention women’s education, which I feel that could have added more weight to your paper and given you more to discuss.

    I did enjoy seeing Franklin’s view of the drunks of Boston and his criticisms/ advice for how to appear less affable while being drunk. I enjoyed your review of the essay and learned quite a bit from it as well.

  2. Thank you!!

    I didn’t talk about women’s education because I did not read anything about women’s education in letter #12. My perception was that the letter’s topic was purely about drunkenness. Did you get anything different out of the letter?

  3. Wow! I really like all the background information you gave in the beginning about Franklin and his Dogood character! It added a lot to your essay and was a really good introduction that helped to transition into the individual discussion on letter number 12.You used great quotations from the actual essay, and I also liked the way you explained their relevance so that the reader knows why you incorporated them in the first place. All in all I like this review for its briefness and its detail.

  4. Benjamin Franklin was a prolific writer and publisher in colonial America. He is known as the Founding Father of the United States. In 1722, he published a series of letters in his Pennsylvania Gazette under the pseudonym Silence Dogood. The first letter was written by a widow named Silence Dogood to her friend Mrs. Deborah Read, and it offered advice on how to live a moral life. If you’re a writer looking for work, chances are you’ll need to find an agency that hires writers.

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  10. ma ad aldı. On altı yaşındaki Franklin, ağabeyinin eserlerini asla yayınlamayacağını bildiğinden, bu kimlik kardeşinin gazetesi The New England Cour metin2 pvp

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