Franklin'sAutobiography:Politics of the Public Self

Abstract

In 1776, with the Revolution faltering, Congress sent seventy-one-yearold Benjamin Franklin to France to intercede on behalf of the fledgling republic and the “New Man.” Dressed in plain homespun, wearing a frontiersman's coonskin cap instead of a powdered wig, and carrying a staff of apple wood, the sagacious Franklin played the Cultivateur Américain to the French court, a role that satisfied their Crevecouerian image of the American as both innocent and worldly wise: the noble rustic. That role was no problem for someone who “put my self as much as I could out of sight” in promoting his own projects, “put on” Father Abraham, Richard Saunders, Poor Richard, and Silence Dowood in order to instruct his audience and, in matters of diplomacy and debate, “put on the humble Enquirer and Doubter.” Putting off the audience by putting on various personae enabled Franklin, to the extent that the Autobiography was written for an English audience, to act as American colonial “father” instructing his “son,” the British monarchy. Whether portraying himself as a gawky youth, ardent young man, civic leader, sage of practical utility, worldly philosopher, or international statesman, Franklin deliberately played to please while playing with his image and his audience.