Issues Surrounding the Early Days of the Women S Rights Movement Essay

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National Women's Rights Convention of 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts, a convention dedicated to rallying important voices around the country for the cause of social reformation regarding the position of women. That the Convention took its name for the women's rights movement is indicative of the major compelling force behind that the new "idea" of womanhood had roused, not just among women but also among men of important social standing. Women were finding their voices and advocating social reform on a variety of levels -- a point reflected by the newspapers and commentators of the day -- and men were showing their support by joining in at the Convention and advocating for social change alongside their female "counterparts." Yet, not everyone viewed the Convention in the same light. This paper will show how the Women's Rights Convention served as a lightning rod of "controversy," indicating that midway through the 19th century the U.S. was undergoing a significant social revolution that was fraught with charges, accusations, and calls-to-arms.

While the "Call" to the Convention in Worcester was issued in order "to consider the great question of Woman's Rights, Duties, and Relations" ("A Convention"), the Convention was not entirely without a call to more "forceful" proceedings. For instance, there was the speech by Abby Kelley Foster which some viewed as advocating the use of "violence" and "bloodshed" in the pursuit of justice for women ("Woman's Rights Convention. Awful Combination of Socialism, Abolitionism, and Infidelity"). Indeed, this was a sentiment that would be shared by temperance advocates like Carrie Nation, who literally took an axe to saloons decades later during the era of Prohibition, which may be said to have had its origins in the Women's Rights Convention.

Moreover, this "fighting" and "antagonistic" sentiment was picked up on by newspapers like The New York Herald, which attempted to reduce the Convention to an "us" vs. "them" paradigm -- using the "pantaloons" vs. "pantalettes" quip in its headline along with the accusation that the women reformers were repudiating both the Bible and the Constitution ("Woman's Rights Convention. Awful Combination of Socialism, Abolitionism, and Infidelity"). Yet this interpretation of events was only one among many, and there were many voices that sought to represent the Convention and its ideas in a more favorable light. But even among women at the Convention, there was disunity, as some opposed the idea of linking the women's struggle for equal rights to the struggle of persons of "color" to achieve equality ("Woman's Rights Convention and People of Color"). Men like Frederick Douglas, who published The North Star, saw the two issues as fundamentally linked, as they were rooted in the notion of equality rather than racism and sexism. Still, the fact that abolition itself was such a fiery topic that would be used just a decade later to draw the Union into "civil war" suggests that the Convention was sitting atop a veritable powder keg of issues and ideas destined to ignite over the coming years.

Nonetheless, records of the proceedings of the event reveal a relatively focused and calm call for a total reorientation of American sociality -- including equal education for women, equal partnership in the labor force, equal share in administrations, and equal representation in courts and ecclesiastical organizations ("Proceedings: A Session-by-Session Guide"). This call, of course, was followed by a number of speeches and presenters who drew attention to other points. However, women like Elizabeth Blackwell came away from her examination of the "many topics of interest" with the conclusion that there was "great energy, much right feeling, but not ... a great amount of strong, clear thought" (Blackwell). Blackwell, for instance, must have perceived an "anti-man" sentiment among presenters at the Convention, because it was this sentiment that she repudiated in her editorial of 1850. Most significantly, however, Blackwell touched upon a deeper issue underlying the Convention -- and this was the politicization of the real struggle, which she identified as "the development of the human soul and body" (Blackwell).

For Blackwell, this development was not a matter of "rights" or even of "women's rights" or "man's rights": she viewed the matter of "rights" almost to be political counterproductive as it pitted individuals against one another and men against women, as could be evidenced by the articles printed by newspapers like The New York Herald and The Boston Daily Mail. In the latter ran the editorial headline: "Grand Demonstration of Petticoatdom at Worcester -- The "Woman's Rights" Convention in Full Blast -- Important and Interesting Report.

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" This report was littered with sophistic and condescending terms and expressions, such as, "we have used the word fairer in its most limited sense," regarding the female participants at the Convention -- a dig that could have easily been construed as chauvinistic by the women of the Convention as well as women of the movement.

Thus, what women wanted was reported by various outlets as being raucous, noisy -- a "blast" of demands, according to The Daily Mail -- and even muddled in thinking according to one of the leading lights of the women's movement, Elizabeth Blackwell, whose letter remained private for many years until its publication in a collection of materials at the end of the 19th century. Thus, even among women it is difficult to pinpoint with minute exactness any actual, coherent "mission statement" or "vision" beyond the "call" given prior to the Proceedings.

Still the fact that the women and their current role and proceedings were described in such a biased manner by the newspapers only reinforces the notion that the patriarchal society in which the women were rising up was destined to force the movement into a confrontation with the powers that be. Blackwell's remorse at seeing the Convention adopt an "anti-man" sentiment was perhaps genuine, but the fact remains that the "anti-man" sentiment was most likely a response to the "anti-woman" sentiment deeply ingrained in the American society, which was significantly shaped by a Puritan mentality depicted by 19th century authors like Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Emily Dickinson.

This spiritual and religious aspect of the underlying element of American society reared its head at the Convention as a number of speaks used religious allegory and tones to depict their stance and/or position regarding women's rights. For example, there was the letter by Elizabeth Wilson, which raised the question, "Supposing it true, that the husband has authority from the Bible to rule his wife, which we utterly deny, how does that constitute men collectively a great hereditary aristocracy, with plenary power to rule all women?" ("Proceedings: A Session-by-Session Guide"). Here, Wilson is confronting the predominant interpretation of the Bible by the patriarchal society against which she and her fellow presenters are speaking. The Bible, she protests, is misinterpreted or misused in order to misrepresent women, oppress them, and de-nature them. The Bible is used differently in the Address read by Abby Price: she uses it to stress that men and women are equal and that in women should be recognized the same natural rights as men:

"The natural rights of woman are co-equal with those of men. So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him; male and female, created he them" ("Proceedings: A Session-by-Session Guide"). Thus, the Convention did not explicitly set out to denounce the Bible but rather to challenge the predominantly patriarchal interpretation of the Bible that had served to support the "caste" system as the Convention called it that placed women within an entirely domesticated role that did not allow her to embrace her natural creativity or rights as a human being.

In conclusion, the early days of the women's movement at the National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester in 1850 saw a controversial moment in history as women from all over the country gathered to voice their challenge to the patriarchs of the United States: they deserved equal rights. While not all of the women agreed with one another on the extent to which equality should be given all (some were concerned that "colored" people might be granted rights too), others, like Blackwell, saw the Convention as energetic but entirely misguided in its preoccupation with rights. Blackwell saw the issue as being one of embracing education and not trying to stir up a political fight in which factions develop and grow. Many newspapers like the Herald and the Daily Mail took up a satirical view and mocked the Convention as being a "blast" of noise and being represented by Petticoatdom. In the end, however, the controversy underlying the National Women's Convention would erupt over the coming years, leading to abolition, temperance, suffrage, and another women's movement in the 20th century. In short, the social issues at the heart of American society were just beginning to boil to the surface in Worcester in 1850.

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