1. THE EARLY WOMEN’S RIGHTS MOVEMENT

2. “Separate Spheres” Concept “Cult of Domesticity”
Background: Women’s roles in 17th and 18th century
19th century –REDEFINED The role of women.
A woman’s “sphere” was in the home (it was a refuge from the cruel world outside.)
Contemporary writers “DEVALUE” the role of women and create a perception of women that still survives today!
The Cult of Domesticity

3. An 1830’s minister from Massachusetts: The power of woman is her dependence. A woman who gives up that dependence on man to become a reformer yields the power God has given her for her protection, and her character becomes unnatural!!

4. Early 19th c. Women Unable to vote. Legal status of a minor.
Single – could own her own property.
Married – no control over her property or children.
Could not initiate divorce.
Couldn’t make wills, sign a contract, or bring suit in court without her husband’s permission.

5. Objective: To discuss the origins of the women’s rights movement.
Historian Margaret Washington Discusses Antebellum Women's Rights

6. From Abolition to Women’s Rights
Prominent Women in the 19th Century and their views on the role of women.
Angela Grimke
Sarah Grimke
Catherine Beecher

7. “Men and women were created equal.” -Sarah Grimke
The Grimke View
“The discussion of the rights of the slave has opened the way for the discussion of other rights, and the ultimate result will most certainly be the breaking of every yoke…an emancipation far more glorious than any the world has ever yet seen.”
-Angelina Grimke
“Men and women were created equal.”
-Sarah Grimke

8. The “Beecher” View
“Petitions to congress, seem, IN ALL CASES, to fall entirely without (outside) the sphere of female duty. Men are proper persons to make appeals to the rulers whom they appoint.” -Catherine Beecher

9. What it would be like if Ladies had their own way!!!

10. Women’s Rights
1840 – split in the abolitionist movement over women’s role in it.
What happened in London at the World Anti-Slavery Convention?
Lucretia Mott
Elizabeth Cady Stanton

11. Seneca Falls Convention – Seneca Falls, NY (1848)
Delegates at the Seneca Falls Convention demanded the following:
Equality for women at work, school, and in church
Right to vote
This is a copy of the announcement placed in the Seneca County Courier advertising the Woman’s Rights Convention.

12. Declaration of Sentiments
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights…
Now, …because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.”

13. Debate regarding suffrage
“the power to chose rulers and make laws, was the right by which all others could be secured.”
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Two different school’s of thought:
1)Right to vote was CRUCIAL to women attaining equality (Stanton)
2) Demanding the vote is too radical (Beecher)

14. Sojourner Truth (1787-1883) 1850-The narrative of Sojourner Truth
“Ain't I a Woman?”, by Sojourner Truth Women's Convention, Akron, Ohio, 1851.

15. “Ain't I a Woman?”, by Sojourner Truth Women's Convention, Akron, Ohio, 1851.
…That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?…

16. …Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him……Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.
- Sojourner Truth

17. Susan B. Anthony Raised a Quaker
Initially involved in temperance and abolition
Later, focused primarily on the right to vote

19. “Election Day!”, 1909