Wonder Woman

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815-1904

Ideas are like people, they come and they go, and sometimes an extraordinary idea takes an extraordinary person to embrace, embody, and articulate it. Such was the case for the idea of equality of the sexes, and such was the role of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

She was one of eleven children (eight surviving) in the days of large families--in Jonestown, New York. Her mother, statuesque and queenly, was an enigma to young Elizabeth, a bright child who apparently was born wanting to break boundaries. Her father was a judge in Upstate New York at the beginning of an era of revolution and reform. He spotted considerable intellect in his daughter and educated her himself, telling her he wished, with her remarkable brain, that she had been born a boy. She graduated from Jonestown Academy in the days before women were allowed admittance to universities. She had a neighbor who taught her Greek, a brother-in-law who taught her the equestrian arts, and law students of her father's to teach her to debate. After graduating from Emma Willard's Seminary for Women in Troy,  she continued to read omniverously and take classes. She read her father's law books and questioned him relentlessly about why the law favored the male sex exclusively. He had, of course, no answer, but he saw the rightness of her arguments and probably saw a wave of rebellion in her eyes.

After a brief foray into the Great Troy [religious] Revival in her teen years, Elizabeth settled into a rational view of religion. She combined the fervor of revivalist Charles Grandison Finney with the reformist mood of the times and questioned the hold religion had on society and the role it afforded women in particular. She spent a good deal of her time thinking about religious matters and decided that “…all religions on the face of the earth degrade her [women], and so long as woman accepts the position that they assign her, her emancipation is impossible," Elizabeth later wrote in her book The Women's Bible.  She came to believe the natural course of studying theology would result in rejecting religion altogether, as she felt religion itself simply a delusion. But she continued to ponder and write about it until her last years.

Elizabeth was pretty and petite when she was young, and always brilliant and brimming with ideas and personality.  As she reached what was considered the marriageable age, she apparently fell in love with her sister's husband, who was a mentor to her and a guide in her self-propelled studies. The two knew their relationship was unwise at best--and, both smitten, they thought better of it and he and his wife removed themselves from the scene and moved to another city. She decided to marry Henry Stanton, an attractive man with a bright future in the law and in politics. Elizabeth asked that the minister remove the phrase "promise to obey" from the wedding vows, whom she had met through her work on the Abolitionist Movement . Henry was ambitious and shared many of her political passions, however, he never supported the cause of women's suffrage. His focus was on abolition and a place for himself in politics. He was impressed with Elizabeth and felt she could be steered away from the life as a belle she was entering. He sought to influence her to be his partner in the cause of the emancipation of slaves, but he did not comprehend or embrace the cause of women's rights. Elizabeth was in love with the handsome, eloquent, and serious fellow, and she looked forward to marriage as a shared adventure for two independent adults. He was ten years older, and she was just 23. She would find a life with him different from what she anticipated.

Shortly after the marriage, both she and Henry were elected as delegates to the World Anti-Slavery convention in London. When couples gathered in London, Elizabeth met, among other American women in the delegation, the formidable Lucretia Mott, a Quaker abolitionist who would join her in the fight for women's suffrage in future years. The most exciting controversy at this convention was that of the eligibility of women to be seated in the hall. They were not considered to be serious delegates and it was said that seating them would be--ahem--promiscuous and inappropriate. Henry made a stirring speech in support of seating the women, but it is generally thought he voted against it when the time came. The convention did little to promote anything to do with abolition of slavery, but it was important because it brought Elizabeth Cady Stanton in touch with Lucretia Mott, and launched her into the burgeoning women's rights movement.

Mrs. Mott was 22 years older than Elizabeth, a practiced speaker in the days when women were not thought to be proper public speakers. She got her experience in the Quaker church, which was ahead of the world in all areas of human rights, and she was in the vanguard of the movement toward woman's suffrage. She was a Quaker minister, an abolitionist, and a feminist. She always dressed and spoke in the modest Quaker mode, but in her heart she came to rebel against the orthodoxy of the sect. Elizabeth found her "a peerless woman," and stated, "...my soul finds great delight in her society." Together in London they not only attended the convention sessions, but also went shopping together, inspected schools and prisons and found time for sightseeing. In a letter, Elizabeth later wrote, "Wherever our party went, I took possession of Lucretia, much to Henry's vexation."

Elizabeth's gifts were many, but perhaps her superpower was her stamina. She was to live a long and rich life, and to get into and out of many scrapes and remain optimistic in spite of many setbacks and outright blunders on her part. I'll deal with some of those in the next entry, but so far I hope I've piqued your interest in one of the fascinating and charming American women in the history of this or any other country. Hold onto your hat.