Early Feminism
The Letters of Abigail and John Adams
1744-1818
Abigail Adams, first Lady to John Adams, used her influence on her husband, John Adams, to advocate for women's rights. By writing letters to him, she enlightened him on issues other men of the time were blind to in an acquiescent and benevolent way that engaged her husband and future audiences who read her letters after publication. She used a meek tone and asked that her husband appeal to her ideals in his political position of power. She voiced her ideas in an accessible way that ended up having a great deal of influence on her time. Throughout the samples, notice her docile and submissive rhetoric. The tone is important to her credibility and to illicit sympathy from her husband, who was regarded as her superior in the setting of the beginning of America. She doesn't reject personality stereotypes of women such as submissiveness and her role as a homemaker, but she pushes for education for women improve the world both genders.
In the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could… that your sex are naturally tyrannical is a truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of master for the more tender and endearing one of friend. |
If we mean to have Heroes, Statesmen and Philosophers, we should have learned women. The world perhaps would laugh at me, and accuse me of vanity, but you I know have a mind too enlarged and liberal to disregard the Sentiment. If much depends as is allowed upon the early Education of youth and the first principals which are instill'd take the deepest root, great benefit must arise from literary accomplishments in women. |
It is really mortifying, sir, when a woman possessed of a common share of understanding considers the difference of education between the male and female sex, even in those families where education is attended to.... Nay why should your sex wish for such a disparity in those whom they one day intend for companions and associates. Pardon me, sir, if I cannot help sometimes suspecting that this neglect arises in some measure from an ungenerous jealousy of rivals near the throne"
The Declaration of Sentiments
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The bible and the church have been the greatest stumbling block in the way of women's emancipation |
Woman's degradation is in mans idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man |
Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice |
Elizabeth Cady Stanton consistently points out the degradation of women that religion has justified in not only Catholicism but in every faith she observed. She repeatedly brings up the concept of virtue and self-sacrifice expected from women and not men and it's injustice.
I would have girls regard themselves not as adjectives but as nouns.
When women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that Bibles, prayer-books, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brains of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that come to them with the divine authority of *Thus sayeth the Lord.* |
Cady Stanton's tone is often overly pleasant to ironically contrast the radical views she displays.
Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving. |
Elizabeth Cady Stanton repeatedly examines the oppression of women as a result of their religions. This was radical at a time when the church was the center of life and getting into Heaven was of utmost importance.
"You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman... I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion/ Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord,' of course he can do it. So long as ministers stand up and tell us Christ is the head of the church, so is man the head of woman, how are we to break the chains which have held women down through the ages? You Christian women look at the Hindoo, the Turkish, the Mormon women, and wonder how they can be held in such bondage...
Now I ask you if our religion teaches the dignity of woman? It teaches us the abominable idea of the sixth century--Augustine's idea--that motherhood is a curse; that woman is the author of sin, and is most corrupt. Can we ever cultivate any proper sense of self-respect as long as women take such sentiments from the mouths of the priesthood?
Elizabeth Cady Stanton also wrote the Women's Bible A classic feminist perspective on the roles of women in society and the home. She
"Men think that self-sacrifice is the most charming of all the cardinal virtues for women, and in order to keep it in healthy working order, they make opportunities for its illustration as often as possible."
Her tone is cheeky and isolating to male audiences. She makes generalizations about men that could be polarizing and limit her to more radical feminists who would view her work. At this point, she had already created The Seneca Falls Convention for Women's rights and had a great deal of credibility with other early feminists so she could get away with more radical rhetoric.
"Men never fail to dwell on maternity as a disqualification for the possession of many civil and political rights. Suggest the idea of women having a voice in making laws and administering the Government in the halls of legislation, in Congress, or the British Parliament, and men will declaim at once on the disabilities of maternity in a sneering contemptuous way, as if the office of motherhood was undignified and did not comport with the highest public offices in church and state.
Often times, Stanton uses her position of influence to present well thought out arguments and discrepancies, She advocates for women's representation in their governing and points out the ironic disrespect men held for maternity while they revere it as what makes a woman a woman.
It was just so in the American Revolution, in 1776, the first delicacy the men threw overboard in Boston harbor was the tea, woman's favorite beverage. The tobacco and whiskey, though heavily taxed, they clung to with the tenacity of the devil-fish.