Unlike her contemporary activist for women’s rights Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) has never been commemorated on a coin. But while reading about her recently, I discovered several remarkable modes of rebellion in her life story, as well as some significant indicators of introvert leanings. In photos, Stanton comes across with a pillowy, grandmotherly aura and few indicators of her stubborn, principled brilliance other than her pose that looks straight into the heart of the viewer. Much more of a thinker and philosopher than other feminist agitators of her time, she originated some clever ways to have an impact for social change as an individual, aside from collective action.
Elizabeth Cady grew up as a favorite of her father, a well-to-do landowner, judge and lawmaker in upstate New York. While playing in her father’s study, she heard about the travails of wives beaten or beaten down by cruel, abusive husbands. She resolved to use scissors to cut the laws permitting such mistreatment out of his law books, “supposing my father and his library were the beginning and the end of the law.” Her father explained that only by persuading the legislators in Albany to enact new laws would there be a change in women’s condition.
Persuasion indeed became her life’s work, as she tirelessly wrote petitions, corresponded with other agitators and crafted speeches to urge equal rights for women, not only with respect to voting but also in marriage, education and finances. To my delight, she also pursued the art of the symbolic gesture. In her teens, she orchestrated a silent walkout of women from church to protest a preacher expounding on the supposed inferiority of women. When she married anti-slavery crusader Henry Stanton, she insisted that the word “obey” be omitted from their marriage vows. In the 1850s, she exulted in the freedom of “bloomers,” wearing the revolutionary new loose trousers with short dresses exclusively for two years even though this embarrassed her son.
In 1866, irked that state and federal laws explicitly defined voters as male, Stanton made this deficiency a talking point nationwide by running for Congress. “Although, by the Constitution of the State of New York woman is denied the elective franchise, yet she is eligible to office; therefore, I present myself to you as a candidate for Representative to Congress,” she announced. This creative act of protest five decades before women won the right to vote lay the foundation for Victoria Woodhull’s run for President in 1872 and subsequent political campaigns by women that eventually succeeded.
Here are some key indicators of introvert tendencies that I detected when I read up on her:
Stanton called her family a “quiet retreat,” even though her household came to include seven children. She often wrote at the kitchen table with several youngsters underfoot. Introverts often feel most at home at home.
Although she instigated and chaired several women’s rights conventions, Stanton often begged off attending them. “I would rather be burnt at the stake (under the influence of an anaesthetic!) than go through another,” she complained to Susan B. Anthony. She was more in her element when writing and strategizing than amidst the hubbub of a crowd.
Despite being a public figure much of her life, with close friends and a prolific writing regimen, she guarded her privacy. She didn’t confide intimate thoughts to others in person or in letters.
Fellow activists often argued with Stanton over her tendency to present a big-picture vision of equality between men and women rather than just the singular – and more acceptable – goal of the right to vote. ‘I feel it to be my special mission to tell people what they are not prepared to hear,” she said. Intense, righteous, self-confident and often outraged, she rarely agreed to compromise in favor of the prudent or pragmatic course of action. To her, the mental essence of an idea mattered more than social cohesion. If organized religion was sexist, then let’s write about that, she figured, spending a decade or so on The Woman’s Bible, despite that project losing her much popular support.
She regarded thinking as one of the greatest pleasures in life. Had she been allowed to become a lawyer, she would undoubtedly have excelled in its adversarial combat. She enjoyed argumentation and loved “hurling thunder” at opponents. Because of her tendency to speak her mind, potential supporters or friends sometimes found her intimidating. Again, abstractions were a guiding force for her, more so than social interchanges.
Stanton based her appeal for women’s rights in the concept of “self sovereignty” – that is, on an ideal of autonomy and personal fulfillment. She did not argue that women deserved rights in order for them to become better wives, daughters or mothers. Instead, intellectual development was a human right for all. In a kind of proto-existentialism, she declared, “The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education... is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life.” Every woman, like every man, ultimately faces the choices and feelings of life as a separate being, she argued.
That last point leads me to a Stanton episode that surprised me greatly, and that I’m still not sure I understand. In 1892 Elizabeth Cady Stanton delivered a speech titled “Solitude of Self” to two Congressional committees. Here is a representative sample of it:
“To appreciate the importance of fitting every human soul for independent action, think for a moment of the immeasurable solitude of self. We come into the world alone, unlike all who have gone before us; we leave it alone under circumstances peculiar to ourselves… No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation. To guide our own craft, we must be captain, pilot, engineer; with chart and compass to stand at the wheel; to match the wind and waves and know when to take in the sail, and to read the signs in the firmament over all. It matters not whether the solitary voyager is man or woman.”
Stanton considered that speech her finest work. For me, the startling part is that Congress also resonated with this stark, atomistic point of view, much more palatable for introverts than for extroverts. Today’s prevailing view holds that human life is inherently social, that we are interconnected beings who cannot thrive without connection. Yet the 1892 legislators voted to print 10,000 copies of her testimony and distribute those copies nationwide. Perhaps today’s conviction that life is essentially communal came into being between her time and ours?