The fact that the emergence of American women’s literature coincided with the birth of the American women’s movement is no mere coincidence. At a time when becoming an author was seen as a male prerogative, the women’s movement gave American women the courage to take up the pen and in some cases become professional writers.
Although not all works written by these women would be considered feminist by today’s definitions, they nevertheless offered female perspectives that were mostly absent from earlier American literature. Conversely, the women’s movement grew largely because many of its members had gained confidence through writing and used it to promote the cause.
For a general summary of the early women’s movement in America, see the essay “The Birth of American Feminism” in this volume. This essay is intended to supplement that overview by focusing on several of the most significant and representative activists and texts of the early American women’s movement. (Margaret Fuller’s The Great Lawsuit, one of the most groundbreaking feminist texts from this period, is discussed in detail in a separate study guide.)
One of the most prominent leaders of the movement was Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902), author of the Declaration of Sentiments, a foundational protofeminist text written for the 1848 Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention. Stanton was an abolitionist as well as a feminist, and she wanted to eliminate racial and gender barriers that limited voting rights and civil rights.
She and Susan B. Anthony were disappointed that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments (1868 and 1870, respectively) extended these rights to Black men but not to white or Black women, and argued that gender discrimination should also be unconstitutional. When their arguments failed to broaden these amendments, they opposed them, an act that created division within the women’s movement and distanced them from their former ally Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists who supported the amendments.
The two women founded the National Women’s Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869, which soon split over the question of whether to support the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Despite her focus on suffrage, Stanton differed from some leaders of the movement by extending her activism beyond this issue by advocating reform of divorce laws, birth control practices, and women’s economic rights.
Another issue that separated her from others in the movement was her stance on Christianity, which she criticized for relegating women to subservient roles; she expressed these views in her book The Woman’s Bible (1895). Between 1868 and 1870 she and Anthony worked with Parker Pillsbury in founding The Revolution, the NWSA’s official periodical that was devoted to women’s issues.
Stanton was introduced to Anthony (1820–1906) in 1851, though both had attended the Seneca Falls Convention three years earlier. Anthony did not produce as much as Stanton in terms of printed texts, but she was an indefatigable speaker on behalf of women for over half of her life.
Like Stanton and many other women’s rights activists of the time, Anthony was active also in the temperance and abolitionist movements. However, after breaking with abolitionists over the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, she focused exclusively on women’s rights, especially suffrage. She also allied herself with conservative suffragists and reunited the NWSA with the more conservative American Women’s Suffrage Association in 1890, a move that displeased the more radical Stanton.
Despite their differences, both women worked together with Matilda Joslyn Gage in writing three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage during the 1880s.
Joining Stanton and Anthony in rejecting the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments for their failure to enfranchise women was Sojourner Truth (circa 1797–1883), the most famous African American women’s rights advocate of her time.
Although many white feminists were also abolitionists who sympathized with African Americans, Truth brought the perspective of a Black former slave to the movement. Truth, whose original name was Isabella Baumfree, was born in a Dutch-speaking area of New York State. She ran away from her second master in 1826, a year before slavery ended in New York. In 1843 Isabella felt a spiritual calling, renamed herself, and began a career as a wandering evangelist in New York and New England.
While in Massachusetts she became involved in the abolitionist movement and met Olive Gilbert, who wrote Truth’s biography Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave (1850). Although Truth was illiterate, her wit and strong personality made her a powerful force in the women’s and antislavery movements.
She attended the women’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio, in May 1851, where she delivered her most famous speech, commonly titled “Ar’n’t I a Woman?” Truth’s speech, which was summarized in the Anti-Slavery Bugle and later transcribed by the convention chairperson Frances D. Gage in 1863, used self-deprecating, folksy humor in refuting the arguments of clergymen who used Scripture to justify the subordination of women.
She also pointed out how the notions regarding “true womanhood” did not extend to enslaved women like herself who were forced to perform hard work outside the home and were not allowed to keep and nurture their children. In addition, the tall, muscular Truth countered the traditional notion of women as naturally weak, timid, and submissive, and as Alison Piepmeier notes, she presented herself as a sort of “tall tale” hero.
Truth reentered the national spotlight in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1863 essay The Lybian Sybil, which depicts Truth as simple and unlettered yet powerful, devout, and humorous. During the Civil War she helped to recruit African American soldiers for the Union army, and after the war she continued to lecture on behalf of various reform movements until a year before her death in 1883.
Although most women’s rights activists were from the North, two of its most influential leaders, Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) and her sister Angelina (1805–1879), grew up on their father’s Charleston, South Carolina, plantation before moving to Philadelphia during the 1820s and converting to Quakerism, a religion known for its opposition to slavery.
Like many women’s-rights activists of their time, they also supported the antislavery movement, largely because they saw their own subjugation under patriarchy as parallel to the oppression of slaves. Their involvement in both movements was a major reason for leaving Charleston, where they were shunned for their radical views.
For both sisters, speaking out against slavery in public required them to reject the patriarchal belief that women should restrict themselves to domestic matters. Although their comparative freedom in the North inspired them to express their beliefs, their lectures throughout New England drew criticism from Catharine Beecher (sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin), who argued that women should stay out of the public sphere and focus on their domestic duties.
Angelina responded with Letters to Catharine Beecher (1837), one of which compares the women’s movement to the Founding Fathers’ fight for independence from British rule (much like Stanton did a decade later in her Declaration of Sentiments). In another letter she brings feminist and abolitionist concerns together by deploring the sexual abuse of slave women by white men, and declares, “the investigation of the rights of the slave has led me to a better understanding of my own.”
That same year Sarah wrote Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman (published serially in The Spectator and as a book a year later), which criticized the popular concept of “separate spheres” for each sex and used the notion that women are moral guides to their husbands in order to argue that women should have more freedom to exert their moral influence in the public sphere.
Angelina ended her lecturing career soon after marrying the abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld in 1838; that same year, Sarah also retired from the lecture circuit. Nevertheless, both women continued to support women’s rights and abolitionism throughout the rest of their lives, and their fearless activism and insightful arguments on behalf of women and African Americans profoundly shaped both movements for decades to come.
Topics for Discussion and Research
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Because of the close ties between the women’s movement and abolitionism, the central ideas of both movements inevitably overlap. Students may be interested in doing research on the legal restrictions placed on women and comparing them to the laws governing slaves and free African Americans in order to see both parallels and differences between these two forms of oppression.
One helpful source on subjugation of women in nineteenth-century America is Ellen Carol DuBois and Lynn Dumenil’s Through Women’s Eyes: An American History with Documents (2008). Kathryn Kish Sklar’s Women’s Rights Emerges within the Anti-slavery Movement, 1830–1870 (2000) is useful in drawing connections between the two movements.
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In many ways, the women’s movement in nineteenth-century America focused mostly on improving the lives of free white women. However, African American feminists such as Sojourner Truth brought the issues of race and slavery into feminist discussions.
Consider how Truth, as a formerly enslaved Black woman, approached the issues of women’s oppression and women’s rights from a different perspective than that of middle-class white women. Students might also explore the impact that Truth had upon the women’s movement in broadening its focus to include Black women, including those who were enslaved.
Nell Irvin Painter’s Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (1996) and her essay “Difference, Slavery, and Memory” (1994) contain useful information about Truth’s involvement in women’s rights and abolitionism.
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Leaders of the women’s movement in nineteenth-century America were often criticized not only for challenging patriarchal oppression but also for expressing their views publicly. The American public’s reaction to the Grimké sisters is a case in point.
What obstacles did they face in speaking out in favor of women’s rights, and how did they respond to these challenges? Pamela Durso’s biography of Sarah Grimké, The Power of Woman (2003), and Gerda Lerner’s biography of both sisters, The Grimké Sisters of South Carolina (2009), are both excellent resources, as is Larry Ceplair’s collection of their writings in The Public Years of Sarah and Angelina Grimké (1989). In addition, Jean Fagan Yellin’s Women and Sisters (1989) includes a chapter that examines Angelina Grimké’s comparison of slavery to the subjugation of women.
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments” borrowed the phrase “all men and women are created equal” from the Declaration of Independence and recast the complaints of oppressed colonists against King George III in gendered terms, with subjugated women demanding rights from their patriarchal rulers.
Compare the two documents and analyze their similarities and differences. Also consider the ways in which the “Declaration of Sentiments” might be considered a critique of the Declaration of Independence for failing to promote equality between women and men.
The “Declaration of Sentiments” may be found online at http://www.usconstitution.net/sentiments.html#sent; the Declaration of Independence is available at http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm.
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Although Stanton’s friendship with Susan B. Anthony was central to the success of the American women’s movement, the two women sometimes disagreed about which issues they should address, and these disagreements were paralleled by conflicts within the movement.
One possible research topic is to explore these philosophical and strategic differences and consider the impact that these differences had on the movement. Two useful biographical sources for researching this topic are Elisabeth Griffith’s In Her Own Right and Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Feminist As Thinker (1985) and Kathleen Barry’s Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist (2000).
Resources
Primary Works
Larry Ceplair, ed., The Public Years of Sarah and Angelina Grimké: Selected Writings, 1835–1839 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989).
A collection of documents by the sisters relating to women’s rights and abolitionism.
Ellen Carol DuBois and Richard Cándida Smith, eds., Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Feminist as Thinker: A Reader in Documents and Essays (New York: New York University Press, 2007).
Contains eight recent essays about Stanton and several of her speeches, articles, and essays.
Angelina E. Grimké, Letters to Catherine E. Beecher, In Reply to An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism, Addressed to A. E. Grimke. Revised by the Author (Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1838); and Sarah Moore Grimké, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman; Addressed to Mary S. Parker, President of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1838).
History of Woman Suffrage, volumes 1–3, edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage (New York: Fowler & Wells, 1881–1886).
Narrative of Sojourner Truth, A Northern Slave, Emancipated from Bodily Servitude by the State of New York, in 1828, told to and edited by Olive Gilbert (Boston: For the author, 1850).
Biography
Pamela R. Durso, The Power of Woman: The Life and Writings of Sarah Moore Grimké (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2003).
A biography of the elder Grimké sister that examines her feminist and antislavery writings.
Grace Farrell, “Beneath the Suffrage Narrative,” Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue Canadienne d’Études Américaines, 36, 1 (2006): 45–65.
Explains the role of feminist activist Lillie Devereux Blake in the American women’s movement and her exclusion from feminist historiography in Anthony’s History of Woman Suffrage.
Elisabeth Griffith, In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).
The definitive Stanton biography.
Gerda Lerner, The Grimké Sisters From South Carolina: Pioneers for Women’s Rights and Abolition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).
A comprehensive biography of the Grimkés.
Nell Irvin Painter, “Difference, Slavery, and Memory: Sojourner Truth in Feminist Abolitionism,” in Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America, edited by Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 139–158.
Examines Truth’s relationship to the women’s rights and abolitionist movements and the construction of her persona.
Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (New York: Norton, 1996).
The authoritative Truth biography.
Criticism
Ellen Carol DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848–1869 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999).
A history of the American women’s movement from the Seneca Falls Convention to the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment.
Naomi Greyser, “Affective Geographies: Sojourner Truth’s Narrative, Feminism, and the Ethical Bind of Sentimentalism,” American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography, 79 (2007): 275–305.
Discusses Truth’s ethical uses of sentimentalism and analyzes how it rhetorically confined her.
Mary Loeffelholz, “Posing the Woman Citizen: The Contradictions of Stanton’s Feminism,” Genders, 7 (Spring 1990): 87–98.
Examines Stanton’s arguments for married women’s property rights without denying their bodily nature in an 1860 speech.
Alison Piepmeier, “‘As Strong as Any Man’: Sojourner Truth’s Tall Tale Embodiment,” in Women as Sites of Culture: Women’s Roles in Cultural Formation from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century, edited by Susan Shifrin (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 25–36.
Argues that Truth borrowed from the tall-tale genre to define herself as a female hero.
Judith Wellman, The Road to Seneca Falls: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the First Woman’s Rights Convention (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004).
A historical account of the birth of the American women’s movement with an emphasis on Stanton.
Jean Fagan Yellin, Women and Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989).
Studies the intersections of gender, class, and racial ideologies in the activism of antislavery feminists.
Categories: Literature
Analysis of Myla Goldberg’s Bee Season 
Analysis of Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees 
Analysis of Carolyn Chute’s The Beans of Egypt, Maine 
Analysis of Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina
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