1 янв 1892 г. - Elizabeth Cady Stanton delivers "solitude of self" speech to Congress

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Speaking to Congress in 1892, women’s rights advocate Elizabeth Cady Stanton described what she called the “solitude of self.” Stanton rejected the claim that women did not need equal rights because they enjoyed men’s protection. “The talk of sheltering woman from the fierce storms of life is the sheerest mockery,” she declared. “They beat on her from every point of the compass, just as they do on man, and with more fatal results, for he has been trained to protect himself.”

Stanton’s argument captured one of the dilemmas of industrialization: the marketplace of labor brought both freedom and risk, and working-class women were particularly vulnerable. At the same time, middle-class women — expected to engage in selfless community service — often saw the impact of industrialization more clearly than fathers, brothers, and husbands did. In seeking to address alcoholism, poverty, and other social and economic ills, they gained a new sense of their own collective power. Women’s civic engagement and reform work thus helped lay the foundations for progressivism (Chapter 19) and modern women’s rights.

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