Franklin’s severed snake

Franklin’s severed snake functions as a compact political image of colonial discontent and division. Bernard uses it to distinguish his generation’s unsettled loyalties from the choices made by his father, while the surrounding discussion ties the colonies’ grievances to trade, taxation, and the possibility of acting together against England.

Image and Political Context

The snake is referenced as a sign of the colonies’ growing discontent with one another and with England. Bernard observes that his father had not anticipated that discontent. The image therefore marks not merely opposition to English rule but a developing sense that the colonies’ relations among themselves have become politically consequential.

The Generational Contrast

The discussion begins with the question of whether the family should choose England or France, and Bernard proposes considering what his father would have done. Jan answers that the choice seems clear: their father had cast his lot with the English when he left New France. Bernard’s qualification—that the father did not reckon with the colonies’ later discontent—makes the past an imperfect guide to the present. The severed-snake image signals that the political situation has changed since that earlier decision.

Trade, Grievance, and Divided Allegiances

Jan describes increasing murmurs in favor of the colonies joining together and defying England. He points to existing defiance in timber and shipbuilding, smuggling, and molasses, while punitive acts and taxes threaten the region’s livelihood. His counterfactual—that the region would thrive if it were not England’s creature—sharpens the tension between economic dependence and colonial resistance.

Bernard does not turn this exchange into a declaration for one side. Instead, he asks whether businessmen should maintain cordial relations with all parties: the French, the English, colonists to both north and south, and the Wentworths. Set against Jan’s account of mounting grievance, his response makes the image’s political force deliberately unsettled: the colonies may be moving toward collective defiance, while commercial survival still demands accommodation across competing allegiances.