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Boston University School of Law

Manuscript of Women, Church, and State: Religion and the Culture of Individual Rights in Nineteenth-Century America

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Chapter 4 - Self-Ownership And The Political Theory Of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Previously Published Article), Elizabeth B. Clark Jan 1989

Chapter 4 - Self-Ownership And The Political Theory Of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Previously Published Article), Elizabeth B. Clark

Manuscript of Women, Church, and State: Religion and the Culture of Individual Rights in Nineteenth-Century America

The emphasis on freedom or enslavement of the body, and the issues that sprang from that focus, were feminists' contribution to nineteenth-century American liberalism, as well as their link to radical thought. Elizabeth Cady Stanton drew arguments from the realm of political liberty and religious tolerance to make the case for choice in private life. But the vision of individual autonomy in sexual and domestic matters served also as the basis for her definition of citizenship and as a paradigm for relations among citizens and between citizens and the state. Self-ownership was the unifying theme that ran through Stanton's political …


Chapter 3 - Religion, Rights And Difference In The Early Woman's Rights Movement (Previously Published Article), Elizabeth B. Clark Jan 1987

Chapter 3 - Religion, Rights And Difference In The Early Woman's Rights Movement (Previously Published Article), Elizabeth B. Clark

Manuscript of Women, Church, and State: Religion and the Culture of Individual Rights in Nineteenth-Century America

The meeting of feminists at Seneca Falls in July of 1848 marked the nominal beginning of the movement which in the nineteenth century was labeled "woman's rights." For us that term has become commonly interchangeable with "suffrage," and we often assume that "woman's rights" describes a seventy-odd year campaign to gain civil and political power and protection from a government which -- although it had perpetrated outrages against women and blacks -- had an unquestioned legitimacy as the guarantor and enforcer of rights.