Treacherous Beauty: Peggy Shippen, the Woman Behind Benedict Arnold's Plot to Betray America by Mark Jacob and Stephen H. Case.
In order to secure readership, many books dealing with history need titles which hint at an alluring degree of female seductiveness and deceit. In fact, this book is a well-researched historical study of the marriage between Peggy Shippen and Benedict Arnold.In historical terms, Arnold will always be an ambiguous figure.
American school texts portray him as a traitor to early revolutionaries. Conversely, the British view him as a trustworthy subject of the English king. As with so much of life, there can be no definitive answer; viewpoints depend on a reader’s individual societal background and framework. At any rate, this book explains Arnold’s reasons for his change in loyalties, consequent to what he viewed as an unwarranted court martial.
As to his wife Peggy, while she clearly knew, supported and seems to have facilitated his plan, she was far from those seductive enchantresses portrayed in history and literature as undermining the honor of those men they enthrall. Instead, she was a wife, remaining loyal after enduring the hurt of infidelity, a concerned and devoted mother, and in the end, a widow, struggling through her last days with meager support from anyone.
Over-all, Treacherous Beauty, the first biography to have been written about this Peggy Shippen Arnold, combines absorbing characterizations with a new and unexplored avenue of understanding.
