Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Radical for Women's Rights

Library of American Biography

by Lois W. Banner

Focusing on Stanton's role as a reformer in the women's rights and suffrage movements, Banner also examines Stanton's relationships with her husband, with Susan B. Anthony, and with other leading feminists of the nineteenth century

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Gender

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

A founder of the field of women's history in the 1970s, Lois Banner is Professor of History Emerita at the University of Southern California. Banner graduated from UCLA, with a Master's Degree in European History and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in American history. Along with Mary Hartman, she founded the Berkshire Conference in Women's History, the biennial conference that has been held ever since and that is considered the major event in the field. She was the first woman president of the American Studies Association, and in 2006 she won the Bode-Pearson prize of the American Studies Association for Lifetime Achievement in the field. Professor Banner is also a past president of the Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association, and of the Coordinating Committee in Women's History of the American Historical Association. She has also been a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, of the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard College, and of the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.

Reviews

[Kipi (the academic stitcher) · Rating 4 out of 5]

While fairly brief, this is a good overview of the life of one of the most important pioneers of the women's movement in 19th-century America. None of her speeches, letters or other writings are included; instead, the author examines more of the personal/relationship/philosophical areas of ECS's life. It's very readable, but I would like to have had more details of her work within the movement itself, perhaps with some of her most important speeches included. These are available in other resources, but it would have been nice to have them set in this context.

[Clif · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the debate about whether mankind progresses, I find one area where it is indisputable, the acceptance, still far from complete, of women as fully equal to men.

Though I had heard the name of Cady Stanton, it was only when I read an essay of hers from 1892 that I was stimulated to find out more about her. This short biography does an excellent job portraying the issues and the times in which this remarkable woman lived. She was a close associate of Susan B. Anthony, seven years her junior, who did the organizational and clerical work while Cady Stanton wrote articles, made speeches and impressed the public with her command of her subject.

Her subject was the inferior status of women and she saw it broadly, as sexual and social, not just in the political lack of suffrage. This book concisely describes the social turmoil of the mid to late 19th century. The drive for abolition of slavery is probably the best known of the movements of that time, but there was a strong effort to ban alcohol as well. Feminism lagged behind, denounced even by a majority of women that Cady Stanton sought to win over, impressing all who heard her speak even if they did not agree with her.

Freed by inherited wealth and aided by a supportive though feisty and usually absent husband due to his dedication to abolition, Cady Stanton, a mother of seven, had the means to provide child care during her frequent absences from home. She lived her entire life in New York state, a center of American political activity in the late 1800's, knowing and associating with such as Frederick Douglass and Henry Ward Beecher. She did not have to travel far to reach New York City and was a principle organizer of the Seneca Falls (NY) convention on women held in 1848 which is considered the opening event for the women's rights movement.

The dispute that dominated Cady Stanton's early life was over priority. Should the rights of the slave or that of the woman be considered first? For most slavery was most important and Cady Stanton would often be attacked for not giving it her full attention. She spoke mostly to groups of women and found a majority of them opposed to her call for female equality. Far more popular among women was the call for temperance. Not surprisingly for someone on the lecture circuits of the time, Cady Stanton also knew and was friends with the much younger Francis Willard who played a leading role promoting prohibition.

Cady Stanton's view on the equality of women, notable in the essay I read, was comprehensive. She believed that all avenues, social and sexual, should be open to women without restriction. She had an outlook that would be at home today, but was astounding 150 years ago, properly earning her place as a trailblazer for women's rights.

This book was a double treat for me as I discovered the Library of American Biography of which it is a title, published in 1980 containing (per the back cover) 28 biographies ranging from Tecumseh to Andrew Carnegie. The Cady Stanton book is only 175 pages in length and not a sentence is wasted. I'm ready for more! Cady Stanton's biographer, Lois Banner, has an easy to read yet energetic style that held my attention throughout.

[Andrew McHenry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This "Library of American Biography" series is a useful introduction into the lives of the several historical Americans profiled. (I read the one on William Jennings Bryan several years ago, and it was good too.) They combine good scholarship and good presentation without getting clogged down in too many trifling details. This one is less than 200 pages and it does a good job of covering the different parts of her life. The author is a bit weak on religion; at one point she labels Charles Finney as a Calvinist. But overall her review is of quality; she covers Cady Stanton's perspective (as it evolved) on all the major issues of the time: suffrage, temperance, slavery, religion, divorce laws, women's property rights, race, etc. I also gained a sense of her development at each phase of her life, including her collaborations and tensions in her relationship with Susan B. Anthony, her inspired radicalism (with both the accomplishments and compromises that came with it), her family life, and some of her struggles. Whatever their eccentricities, passionate figures like this are worth remembering. The hold out before us their visions for a better world, and the world could use some more reformers like this.

[Jill McNish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a brilliant theorist and philosopher, and a complex woman of the 19th Century who struggled to balance her prophetic views with her role as wife and mother of seven. She was, along with Susan B Anthony, a leading light of the 19th century woman’s movement. This may be the best biography of her life currently available, but given the voluminous diaries, correspondence and speeches she left behind, surely she deserves a more probing biography. She and Anthony are national heroes, just as much so as Martin Luther King. They should be treated as such.

[Kathy Bartlett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am glad I read this book as I knew nothing about Stanton. It was a relatively easy read but had an awful lot of detail about political machinations.