Stanton In Her Own Time

Among nineteenth-century women’s rights reformers, Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) stands out for the maternal and secular advocacy that shaped her activism and public reception. A wife and mother of seven, she was also a prolific writer, transatlantic women’s rights leader, popular lecturer, congressional candidate, canny historian, and freethought champion. Her lifelong interest in women’s sexual and reproductive rights and late efforts to reform institutional religion are as relevant to our time as they were to her own. Stanton’s professional life lasted a half-century, ranging from antebellum women’s rights organization and oratory, to a post–Civil War career as a lyceum lecturer, to a late-century role as an incisive religious and cultural critic. Acutely aware of the medical, religious, legal, and educational barriers to women’s independence, she advocated for married women’s right to vote, obtain a divorce, gain custody of their children, and own property. As she grew more radical over the years, she also demanded judicial reform, the separation of church and state, free love, progressive coeducational opportunities, and women’s right to limit their fertility. In this richly contextualized collection of primary sources, Noelle A. Baker brings together accounts of Stanton’s life and ideas from both well-known and recently recovered figures. From the teacher chiding an assertive young woman to erstwhile allies worrying about her growing radicalism, their voices paint a vivid portrait of a woman of vaunting ambition, powerhouse intellect, and her share of human failings.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a brilliant activist-intellectual. That nearly all of her ideas—that women are entitled to seek an education, to own property, to get a divorce, and to vote—are now commonplace is in large part because she worked tirelessly to extend the nation's promise of radical individualism to women. In this subtly crafted biography, the historian Lori D. Ginzberg narrates the life of a woman of great charm, enormous appetite, and extraordinary intellectual gifts who turned the limitations placed on women like herself into a universal philosophy of equal rights. Few could match Stanton's self-confidence; loving an argument, she rarely wavered in her assumption that she had won. But she was no secular saint, and her positions were not always on the side of the broadest possible conception of justice and social change. Elitism runs through Stanton's life and thought, defined most often by class, frequently by race, and always by intellect. Even her closest friends found her absolutism both thrilling and exasperating, for Stanton could be an excellent ally and a bothersome menace, sometimes simultaneously. At once critical and admiring, Ginzberg captures Stanton's ambiguous place in the world of reformers and intellectuals, describes how she changed the world, and suggests that Stanton left a mixed legacy that continues to haunt American feminism.

""Crammed with practical ideas, inspirational images & creative exercises, Conscious Creativity leads the reader through the process of establishing what kind of creative you are..." - Mslexia "The purpose of this book is to enable you to look at things in an alternative and more substantial way, so that you arrive at composition through genuine interest." - Juno magazine “Philippa Stanton is passionate about people connecting to their innate creativity and has distilled these incredible techniques and ideas on how we can tap into that. Philippa is a massively successful Instagramer at @5ftinf and yet she is only too aware how these little two dimensional squares can limit our experiences and restrict our creativity, so it’s not without a little irony that she’s written a book to encourage people to step away from their screens and connect more with the 3D world. It’s a fascinating subject and I wholeheartedly recommend the book for anyone who’s working in the creative industry or is curious about the world around them." - Sophie Robinson (DIY SOS, the Great British Interior Design Challenge, This Morning) How often do you notice the texture of a painted wall or the scent of a friend’s house and, importantly, how they make you feel? Connect your observations and your emotions and transform your creative practice with this essential toolbox packed full of exercises, tips, stunning images and personal experiences from dynamic artist Philippa Stanton. There is creativity in all of us, but it can easily be buried beneath our everyday concerns, or need a spark to bring it back to life. Whether you’ve lost your mojo or just need some fresh ideas, artist and photographer Philippa Stanton’s lively guide will stimulate your imagination and reinvigorate your creative life. Conscious Creativity will help you fully appreciate what is around you, opening all your senses to the beauty you may not notice every day, and showing you how to capture it. Simple, engaging exercises that encourage observation and experimentation will give you an insight into your own aesthetics as you take a conscious step to note the colours, shapes, shadows, sounds and textures that fill your world and how they make you feel. Bursting with practical ideas and inspirational images, Conscious Creativity shows you how to unlock your potential, learn to use your natural curiosity and take a leap into the most creative time of your life.

The first comprehensive, fully documented biography of the most important woman suffragist and feminist reformer in nineteenth-century America, In Her Own Right restores Elizabeth Cady Stanton to her true place in history. Griffith emphasizes the significance of role models and female friendships in Stanton's progress toward personal and political independence. In Her Own Right is, in the author's words, an "unabashedly 'great woman' biography."

More than one hundred years after her death, Elizabeth Cady Stanton still stands—along with her close friend Susan B. Anthony—as the major icon of the struggle for women’s suffrage. In spite of this celebrity, Stanton’s intellectual contributions have been largely overshadowed by the focus on her political activities, and she is yet to be recognized as one of the major thinkers of the nineteenth century. Here, at long last, is a single volume exploring and presenting Stanton’s thoughtful, original, lifelong inquiries into the nature, origins, range, and solutions of women’s subordination. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Feminist as Thinker reintroduces, contextualizes, and critiques Stanton’s numerous contributions to modern thought. It juxtaposes a selection of Stanton’s own writings, many of them previously unavailable, with eight original essays by prominent historians and social theorists interrogating Stanton’s views on such pressing social issues as religion, marriage, race, the self and community, and her place among leading nineteenth century feminist thinkers. Taken together, these essays and documents reveal the different facets, enduring insights, and fascinating contradictions of the work of one of the great thinkers of the feminist tradition. Contributors: Barbara Caine, Richard Cándida Smith, Ellen Carol DuBois, Ann D. Gordon, Vivian Gornick, Kathi Kern, Michele Mitchell, and Christine Stansell.

Mrs. Stanton's Bible traces the impact of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's religious dissent on the suffrage movement at the turn of the century and presents the first book-length reading of her radical text, the Woman's Bible. Stanton is best remembered for organizing the Seneca Falls convention at which she first called for women's right to vote. Yet she spent the last two decades of her life working for another cause: women's liberation from religious oppression. Stanton came to believe that political enfranchisement was meaningless without the systematic dismantling of the church's stifling authority over women's lives. In 1895, she collaboratively authored this biblical exegesis, just as the women's movement was becoming more conservative. Stanton found herself arguing not only against male clergy members but also against devout female suffragists. Kathi Kern demonstrates that the Woman's Bible itself played a fundamental role in the movement's new conservatism because it sparked Stanton's censure and the elimination of her fellow radicals from the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Mrs. Stanton's Bible dramatically portrays this crucial chapter of women's history and facilitates the understanding of one of the movement's most controversial texts.

Blatch's dedication to woman suffrage, marked by a concern for social justice and human liberty, closely paralleled that of her mother. After her mother's death in 1902, Blatch returned to the United States. There she encouraged women from all classes to participate in the suffrage movement, advocated a lively activist style, and brought a genuine political sensibility to the movement.