Women’s rights

• How did Victorian rules for men and women differ?

• How does Stanton believe that an education would help women better control their own lives?

• What hardships did women endure to receive the same education as their male counterparts?

• In England, the period from 1837-1901 is known as the Victorian Era because Queen Victoria’s long reign spanned those years. Middle-class Victorians had a strict code of manners:– A widow was expected to dress in black from head to

toe and never to remarry. In contrast, a widower wore a black band around his hat or sleeve and was expected to find a new wife quickly.

– Women wore suffocating corsets pulled tightly enough to achieve the ideal waist measurement of 18-20 inches.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “The Solitude of Self”

• The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education…is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life…As an individual, she must rely on herself. . . . To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes... In talking of education, how shallow the argument that each class must be educated for the special work it proposes to do, and that all those faculties not needed in this special work must lie dormant and utterly wither for want of use, when, perhaps, these will be the very faculties needed in life’s greatest emergencies!

Supposing woman to have been formed only to please, and be subject to man, the conclusion is just, she ought to sacrifice every other consideration to render herself agreeable to him: and let this brutal desire of self-preservation be the grand spring of all her actions, when it is proved to be the iron bed of fate, to fit which her character should be stretched or contracted, regardless of all moral or physical distinctions. But, if, as I think, may be demonstrated, the purposes, of even this life, viewing the whole, are subverted by practical rules built upon this ignoble base, I may be allowed to doubt whether woman was created for man: and, though the cry of irreligion, or even atheism, be raised against me, I will simply declare, that were an angel from heaven to tell me that Moses's beautiful, poetical cosmogony, and the account of the fall of man, were literally true, I could not believe what my reason told me was derogatory to the character of the Supreme Being: and, having no fear of the devil before mine eyes, I venture to call this a suggestion of reason, instead of resting my weakness on the broad shoulders of the first seducer of my frail sex.From A Vindication on the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft

• By the late 1800’s, women in Germany were permitted to attend university lectures- but only if they stood in the back of the lecture hall or listened from outside an open window or door. Despite such obstacles, determined women struggled to complete their educations.- Source: Ellis, Elisabeth G., and Anthony Esler. World History: Connections to Today. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001. 505. Print.

Women’s rights

• How did Victorian rules for men and women differ?

• How does Stanton believe that an education would help women better control their own lives?

• What hardships did women endure to receive the same education as their male counterparts?