a story of women's rights in antebellum New York
- Categories
- Book/Boek
- Creator
- Ginzberg, Lori D.
- Publish Year
- 2005
- Shelfmark
- VS 1D 2005
- Thesaurus
- vrouwenbewegingen, eerste feministische golf, vrouwenkiesrecht, Verenigde Staten, 19e eeuw
- Description
- On a summer day in 1846--two years before the Seneca Falls--six women in rural upstate New York sat down to write a petition to their state's constitutional convention, demanding 'equal, and civil and political rights with men.' Refusing to invoke the traditional language of deference, motherhood, or Christianity as they made their claim, the women even declined to defend their position, asserting that 'a self evident truth is sufficiently plain without argument.' Ginzberg asks who they were and how might their story change the collective memory of the struggle for woman's rights. She pieces together information from census records, deeds, wills, and newspapers to explore why, at a time when the notion of women as full citizens was declared unthinkable, too dangerous to discuss, six ordinary women embraced it as common sense.