Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was one of the 19th century's best-known feminists and advocates of women's suffrage. Nearly forgotten in the early 20th century, she has since been noted for her significant contributions by biographers and documentary filmmakers. But have they adequately dealt with the complexity and contradictory aspects of her character? Ginzberg (history, Penn State Univ.; Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman's Rights in Antebellum New York), a leading scholar in the area of 19th-century women's benevolence and reform work, argues that they have not. In this well-documented work, she successfully takes on the task herself. Verdict Ginzberg has produced a readable and realistic account of the life of one of the most important feminists and intellectuals of the 19th century, a woman who was at once an abolitionist who could sound like a racist and an advocate of civil rights for women whose language often reeked of elitism. This work promises to be a classic and is recommended for all readers, along with Ellen DuBois's recent Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Feminist as Thinker: A Reader in Documents and Essays.-Theresa McDevitt, Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
CHOICE Review
Elizabeth Cady Stanton receives rigorous scholarly attention in Ginzberg's biography, which supersedes earlier publications, including Elisabeth Griffith's In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (CH, Jan'85) and Lois W. Banner's Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Radical for Woman's Rights (CH, May'80). Possessing one of the 19th-century's most formidable minds, Stanton entered into debates about slavery, temperance, and woman's rights. Ginzberg, who has published extensively on antebellum reform, rightly appreciates Stanton as a public intellectual profoundly involved in the discourse of her day. The author shows how Stanton defied contemporary conventions to propose reforms realized only in the 20th century. In this well-written biography, Stanton appears with all her defects: she did make anti-immigrant, racist comments as she pursued her goal of universal adult suffrage. Without apology, Ginzberg (Penn State) explains how Stanton's class background and political objectives shaped her thought. Readers will learn of the tensions in her partnership with Susan B. Anthony, a corrective to Geoffrey C. Ward's Not for Ourselves Alone (1999). No short biography, nevertheless, can analyze fully the complexity and depth of Stanton's thought. Advanced undergraduates should consult Sue Davis's The Political Thought of Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Women's Rights and the American Political Traditions (CH, Jan'09, 46-2927). Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. L. L. Stevenson Franklin and Marshall College
Booklist Review
In 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, in the midst of arguments within the abolition movement, activist women came together to ponder the need for a movement specifically to address their concerns. Stanton emerged as a leading figure, arguing vehemently for suffrage disconnected from the issue of the abolition of slavery. Her husband was a star speaker on the abolitionist circuit but lukewarm on women's rights, worried that it would distract from the more urgent issue of ending slavery. Historian Ginzberg draws on Stanton's prolific writings in speeches, diaries, articles, as well as correspondence and other historical accounts to understand why the leader for women's suffrage was eventually eclipsed by others, including her friend of 50 years, Susan B. Anthony. Anthony, a Quaker, was severe and strict, but Stanton was well-off and indulgent, charming, and arrogant. Stanton's sometimes racist positions in defense of women's rights and her restless skipping from issue to issue the vote, marriage and children, freedom from religious constraints have rendered her legacy slippery. Ginzberg offers a compelling look at a complex woman in pre-feminist history.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2009 Booklist
Kirkus Book Review
A well-documented, well-balanced account of the life of "the founding philosopher of the American movement for woman's rights." Ginzberg (History and Women's Studies/Penn State Univ.; Untidy Origins: A Story of Woman's Rights in Antebellum New York, 2005, etc.) offers a full-length portrait of a brilliant, confident, assertive woman for whom raising seven children was no bar to remarkable activism in the cause of women's rights. The author shows us Stanton in her many roles: child, wife, mother, author and campaigner. At the International Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, Stanton was outraged to discover that women were not allowed to participate. Eight years later, in Seneca Falls, N.Y., she helped organize the first women's-rights convention. Stanton drafted the convention's Declaration of Sentiments, which was modeled on the United States Declaration of Independence and proclaimed that men and women are created equal. For years she and Susan B. Anthony collaborated, with Stanton primarily writing and Anthony traveling and speaking. After the Civil War, the two women broke with their former colleagues, the abolitionists, and lobbied against granting African-American men the right to vote, with Stanton arguing that the votes of educated women were needed to offset those of former slaves. Ginzberg notes that the image this created of the woman's suffrage movement as primarily concerned with the rights of middle-class white women was not entirely false. When her children were older, Stanton traveled extensively on the lecture circuit, where she campaigned vigorously for the property rights of married women, for equal guardianship of children and for liberalized divorce laws. Deploring the position of women within organized Christianity, she wrote The Woman's Bible to correct the sexism she found in scripture. Despite her flaws of elitism and racism, Stanton, Ginzberg argues, used her powerful intellect and her persuasive prose to challenge the nation to see women as full citizens. Brings to life a complex woman whose place in the history of women's rights has been somewhat overshadowed by that of her colleague Susan B. Anthony. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.