Becoming Miss Lee

Chapter 3 - Prelude to a Revolution

                Dearest Martha,

        Or would you prefer to be called Missus Jefferson from now on? You cannot imagine how excited I am to here that he has been courting you. Mister J is a man of high morals and standards, so I am sure that your happiness is not feigned. He adores you. Whenever we are in the library, he always goes on about you. I was right to trust you about giving him a chance. However, if he does anything to upset you, do let me know. I will personally go and pester him out of house and home myself. As for Nathan, I haven't heard back from him. I worry beyond imagination for his safety. I have heard that the situation has only gotten tenser. All I want is for him to be safe. Do you think his absence of letters is because I was adopted by the Lees? It has been since that letter that he has stopped writing. I do have a tendency to worry, though. Write back to me soon.

                                                        Forever Your Most Affectionate Friend,

                                                        Beatrice Lee

-

It had been a little over two years since I had moved in with the Lees. Mister Lee had remarried a new woman, Miss Anne, a year after Missus Lee had passed away, and she adored me as much as I did her. At thirteen years of age, I was steadily beginning to come into my own out of childhood. I had never truly given most of what had been going on is the other colonies much thought. I was absorbed in my own little cloistered world of Greek epics to truly be concerned by earthly matters. I had heard quips brought up in conversation between Uncle Francis and Mister Lee, and had I known the extent, perhaps I would have been a little more worried. Nathan had also stopped writing me in that year of 1770. I had begun to believe that my friend of so many years had finally grown bored of me, so I drowned my thoughts in Latin and Hebrew and politics and anything else I could think of to distract myself. I found both Thomas and Mister Lee wonderful partners in conversation and Thomas, only a year younger than myself and very intelligent for his age, became my constant companion.

It was one cold March day when we were walking along near the house that we both came to the realization about how bad it truly was outside of our house in Virginia. "I want to go to William and Mary, honestly."

"You're lucky. I can't even attend a school like that."

"Well, you are a girl. Why would you need to go to school?"

I spun towards Thomas and glared at him. The genuine look of horror on his face at offending me and incurring my wrath proved that he truly did not understand why I was so angry. "So what? Why does being a girl make me any less entitled to an education as a man? What if I want to learn to debate or comprehend or do whatever else is done at a collegiate school? Thomas, can I or can I not speak Latin just as well as you?"

"Better, actually..."

"What about Greek? Hebrew? French?"

"Better, better, and much, much better..."

"Who wins the debates- logically?"

"Even father says that you do..."

"So why can I not go to the same school as you?" The light seemed to click and I saw realization in his eyes that became a genuine look of confusion. "Do you see my point, Thomas?"

Thomas turned to me and sighed, "How do we go from schools to ethical debates on the right of education for women?"

"I... I don't know, actually. We should start a debate society."