Customer Reviews

The Solitude of Self: Thinking About Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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I enjoyed reading this short book about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her times because it told me just enough about her and fitted her thoughts and ideas into what was going on intellectually in the United States at the time. I appreciated the connections made between her type of feminist thinking and that of others before and after. It made me think, too, about my own feminist philosophy. And, once again, I was surprised by the depths of male chauvinism through the ages.

It seems that ECS was on to "self esteem" a century before it had a name. The author starts here and ties the book up contemplating the loneliness of radicals and those ahead of their times.

In the middle the author strays from the idea of self, but the rambling is interesting. We learn more about how the 19th century feminism grew out of the abolitionist movement (just as 20th century feminism grew out of the civil rights movement) something of the 19th century lecture circuit, and divisions in the women's suffrage movement, etc.

I'd have liked to have seen more on the idea of "self" and/or the "solitude of self" in this period, but found enough other material in the book to keep me reading.

This book is a study of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's final address in 1892 called "Solitude of Self" in which she feels the human condition we all suffer sometimes, loneliness. When she went to London in 1840, the way she was treated made her declare, "I am only a woman."

In this different perspective on woman's suffrage and such, the Civil War is called a "Revolution" of sorts, but it was a fight to the bitter end, a war to remember and which may never be over in people's minds. She talks about the errors of the past, equality for all, and a century of wrong.

Elizabeth, from upstate New York and later Boston, was concerned with aboliton, suffrage, and the power of religious doctrine. She spoke in the Grand Opera House in 1975 Chicago to a standing-room only audience. She was a political activist of her time. This book is based on letters, diaries, speeches, and Mrs. Stanton's THE WOMEN'S BIBLE.

Vivian Gornick has written FIERCE ATTACHMENTS and APPROACHING EYE LEVEL previously.