Elizabeth Cady Stanton - by Ellen Carol DuBois (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The definitive biography of American suffragist and women's rights pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton, from a preeminent historian of women's suffrage

"The life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton still has much to teach us. The invented prisons of race, sex, and class are still with us, but learning about successful past struggles against them can help to equalize the future." --Gloria Steinem

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a singular leader, thinker, and organizer whose fight for women's emancipation stretched from the 1840s to her death in 1902, a full fifth of America's history. Yet her legacy has been marked by controversy. In this landmark biography, eminent historian Ellen Carol DuBois paints a fresh portrait of this complex crusader whose tireless work made contemporary feminism possible.

Born in 1815 into a family deeply marked by the tumult of the American Revolution and surging evangelicalism, Stanton was captivated by Enlightenment ideas about individual freedom and transformed by early experiences in what she called "the school of antislavery." Though most remembered for her fight for the vote, she was also an early crusader for women's reproductive autonomy and reforming the institution of marriage, and against Christianity's subordination of women. Her rifts with Black reformers and embrace of nativist ideas tarnished her reputation, but her words still have the ability to move and agitate people today.

Building upon exhaustive archival research and a deep engagement with Stanton's copious writings, Elizabeth Cady Stanton brilliantly captures a crucial reformer in all of her intelligence, moral ambiguity, and power.

Review Quotes

"DuBois's Elizabeth Cady Stanton is a must-read biography! This lavish accounting and analysis of one of the most important women in U.S. history and women's history by one of the nation's most brilliant historians of women opens up a world of domesticity and activism, as well as personal, social, and national evolution that is a layered revelation to anyone interested in U.S. history. DuBois is a seasoned researcher and excellent writer who brings new insight into the personal life, political growth, and social world of this essential pioneer in women's rights across many decades of America's evolution as a nation of many peoples, voices, and struggles."--Brenda E. Stevenson, University of California, Los Angeles

"A major figure deserves a matching biographer, and here, in this book, Elizabeth Cady Stanton has found hers. Out of a mind and spirit rich in knowledge and devotion, Ellen Dubois has fashioned a distinguished biography that secures Stanton's unique place, once and for all, in the American movement for women's rights. A pleasure to read."--Vivian Gornick

"At once critical and empathetic, Ellen Dubois's biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton revives a leading American intellectual and feminist whose devotion to women's rights, liberal individualism, and natural law increasingly came into conflict with beliefs in racial and human equality. By exploring Stanton's intellectual evolution, Dubois reveals much about both the nineteenth-century and modern United States."--Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands

"The life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton still has much to teach us. The invented prisons of race, sex, and class are still with us, but learning about successful past struggles against them can help to equalize the future."--Gloria Steinem

About the Author

Ellen Carol DuBois is distinguished professor of history at UCLA. Her pioneering works on the US woman suffrage movement include Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848-1869, Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage, and Suffrage: Women's Long Battle for the Vote. She lives in Los Angeles.