BOOK DISCUSSION GUIDE
Summary: Elizabeth Cady Stanton is one of the most
important political figures of 19th Century America, and yet today her
work on behalf of women’s rights is little known. Her political
activism began in the abolition movement. Upon attending the World’s
Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, where women were denied an
active role, she and other women began to discuss women’s role
in society. In 1848 Stanton, with other women, organized the first women’s
rights convention, where the American suffrage movement was launched
as well as several other legal and social causes that affected women’s
lives. In 1851 she began a life-long collaboration with Susan B. Anthony;
they became the voice and force behind the burgeoning women’s
movement until their deaths.
Stanton’s autobiography is in fact a narrative that situates
her story in that of the burgeoning American society. While the American
Revolution won political freedom for white men, it did not free women
from the patriarchal social structure that limited them. Stanton’s
crusade for women’s rights is part of the American continuum of
struggle for self-reliance and the development of the individual who
rejects authority. Stanton’s book is a collection of stories and
anecdotes meant to appease some of her critics; in fact she was a controversial
figure whose radical ideas and strong convictions helped maintain political
agitation that resulted in laws being re-written and eventually the
enfranchisement of women.
Questions:
1. What themes emerge in Eighty Years and More?
2. What do you imagine made Stanton a controversial figure both to
the public and within the women’s movement?
3. What issues that Stanton writes about in her autobiography are still
unresolved today?
4. How would you describe Stanton’s personality?
5. What influenced her to take up women’s causes?
6. In what ways did Stanton conform, and in ways did she refuse to
conform?
7. What was your reaction to Stanton’s childrearing practices?
8. How important was collaboration in Stanton’s life?
9. Did you find any ironies in Stanton’s stories of her life?
10. Why did Stanton (and Anthony) travel so extensively in the West?
11. Why do you think she does not mention her husband after the first
few years of her marriage?
12. In the second half of the autobiography she talks very little about
her domestic life as a wife and mother. Why do you think this is? For
example, she only mentions that one of her children has died and does
not mention her husband’s death.
13. Who do you think was the intended audience of Stanton’s autobiography?
14. What did you enjoy about this autobiography; what did you not like?
Related Information:
Not
For Ourselves Alone - video
Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, correspondence, writings, speeches
About.Com
- Woman's History
National
Woman's History Museum
Elizabeth
Cady Stanton on RootsWeb - go to bottom for genealogical
information
Questions and related information provided by Elaine Handley.
This discussion guide made possible with public
funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency. Sponsored
by the Mohawk Valley Library System and participating member libraries.
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