Women’s Rights Convention in the United States was held
in Stanton’s new hometown of Seneca Falls, New York.
Stanton wrote the convention’s bold Declaration of Senti-
ments, adopting the rhetoric of the Declaration of Indepen-
dence and condemning male usurpation of authority over
women in matters religious, “when that belongs to her con-
science and her God.”
Stanton’s 1850 meeting with Susan B. Anthony marked
a turning point in the women’s rights movement. Their ar-
dent friendship lasted over fifty years and became one of the
most productive partnerships in American political history.
Due to child-care and household concerns (the Stantons had
seven children), Stanton emerged as the writer of the pair,
while Anthony traveled and lectured for women’s rights.
While they prioritized voting rights, they never made this the
exclusive focus of their wider goal: recognizing women’s full
humanity.
During the Civil War, Anthony and Stanton formed the
Loyal League, which urged the immediate emancipation of
slaves. Stanton herself began to travel and speak during this
period, developing into an accomplished orator. In the post-
war period, however, serious splits occurred among progres-
sive advocates of increased voting rights. Angered by what
they saw as a betrayal of women by those who advanced suf-
frage for African American men only, Stanton and Anthony
allied themselves with racist and xenophobic forces. Stanton
argued explicitly for the fitness of educated white women as
voters over freed slaves and immigrants, whom she carica-
tured as “Sambo” and “Yung Tung.” Stanton’s rhetoric
alienated former allies, including Mott, Lucy Stone, and
Wendell Phillips. This period has compromised Stanton’s
legacy and fueled ongoing conflict in American feminism
over class and race. The woman suffrage movement broke
into two competing organizations in 1869: the National
Woman Suffrage Association (led by Anthony and Stanton)
and the rival American Woman Suffrage Association. By the
time the organizations were reunited in 1890, the woman
suffrage cause was bereft of its abolitionist roots.
The visibility of the woman suffrage movement in-
creased through the last quarter of the nineteenth century,
as did its sense of its own history. With Anthony and Matilda
Joslyn Gage, Stanton edited and wrote the first three vol-
umes of the History of Woman Suffrage (1881–1887), an ad-
mirably exhaustive chronicle of the movement. Opposition,
and occasional support, from religious leaders mark many of
its pages.
Stanton had always scrutinized legal restrictions on
women, but became increasingly concerned with religious
limitations. In her last twenty years she wrote two major
texts: her autobiography, Eighty Years and More (1898), and
The Woman’s Bible, which she wrote and edited. These texts
reveal her religious stance. Her autobiography presents her
tireless opposition to superstition and her lifelong embrace
of liberal religious inquiry—her freethinking mind investi-
gated theories of Charles Darwin, the matriarchate, and
theosophy.
Stanton planned The Woman’s Bible as a commentary
and analysis on scriptural passages concerning women. She
invited many women religious leaders and intellectuals to
participate, but only a handful responded, fearing a backlash
from a conservative religious public would damage the suf-
frage cause. Prominent contributors included Eva Parker In-
gersoll and Gage (author of another stinging critique of patri-
archal religion, Woman, Church, and State [1893]). In her
commentaries, Stanton praises strong women (her assess-
ment of Eve’s “courage” and “ambition” is justly famous),
condemns inconsistencies as “a great strain on credulity,” re-
jects auto-validating claims of inspiration, and urges women
to self-sovereignty rather than self-sacrifice. Stanton and her
collaborators used humor, science, logic, common sense, and
principles of justice to read against the grain of traditional
biblical interpretation.
During Stanton’s lifetime, The Woman’s Bible met a
chilly reception. It was parodied, denounced, or belittled by
reviewers. The crushing blow came when the organization
Stanton herself had led, now called the National-American
Woman Suffrage Association, officially dissociated itself
from the book. Despite the eloquent plea of Susan B. Antho-
ny in her defense, this 1896 vote effectively ended Stanton’s
official role in the suffrage movement.
The Woman’s Bible remained forgotten until the
women’s liberation movement of the 1970s. Feminist schol-
ars and practitioners of religion found its method and con-
tent congenial: it was collaborative, questioned received
authority, established a feminist legacy of biblical interpreta-
tion, and outlined how gender bias shaped sacred texts.
However, The Woman’s Bible has had its modern critics, par-
ticularly over its anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish biases.
At her death in 1902 many of Stanton’s contemporaries
memorialized her as an undaunted leader, while ignoring her
analysis of belief and scripture. Yet her religious critique may
well ensure her importance to future generations.SEE ALSO Child, Lydia Maria; Gage, Matilda Joslyn; Gen-
der and Religion.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Three editions of The Woman’s Bible are available: The (Original)
Feminist Attack on the Bible (The Woman’s Bible), edited by
Barbara Welty (New York, 1974); The Woman’s Bible: Part
1: The Pentateuch; Part 2: Judges, Kings, Prophets, and Apos-
tles, edited by the Coalition Task Force on Women and Reli-
gion (Seattle, Wash., 1974); and The Woman’s Bible, fore-
word by Maureen Fitzgerald (Boston, 1993). Kathi Lynn
Kern’s Mrs. Stanton’s Bible (Ithaca, N.Y., 2001) is an excel-
lent full-length study. Two commentary projects motivated
by Stanton’s Bible were published by feminist scholars on its
one hundredth anniversary: The Women’s Bible Commentary,
edited by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe (London
and Louisville, Ky., 1992; expanded ed., 1998), and Search-STANTON, ELIZABETH CADY 8731