LITR 4232: American Renaissance
University of Houston-Clear Lake, spring 2003
Sample Student Research Project

Lydia Dennis
Dr. White
Literature 4232
14 April 2003

Representation through Literature

            Women of the American Renaissance established a platform for women in the twentieth century to change history.  Through their literature, these women were able to publicize the denigration of women, and as a result brought about the change for the women’s suffrage movement.  The American Renaissance also brought about many changes including the advent of women writers.  Before this time, women wrote as a means of expressing their personal feelings.  It was not until the rise of the American Renaissance that these women utilized their writings to voice their opinions and bring about change. 

Women wanted more than anything to have the same rights as men did. They wanted to be included in the politics as well as have the same type of education men had.  Among the women fighting for equal rights included Sara Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  These two women, along with many others, had the ability to utilize their writings to reach other oppressed women and offer them the same courage to speak out against discrimination. 

            Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Fuller became representatives for women.  Editors sought the opinion of Stanton about women’s issues, such as child rearing and fashion (Gordon).  Fuller, through her “conversations” also brought women’s issues to light.  Women were able to gather and discuss issues each shared.  Together, these women were able to establish a beginning for women’s rights, which ultimately changed the manner in which women were viewed.  Women were eventually allowed to vote and offered rights only men were entitled to.  It was through their literature that the nation was able to view the discriminations and voice their opinions for the change.   

            Margaret Fuller, unlike many other women, was afforded the same quality education as any other man would have had.  Although she was a girl, her father made sure that she received this education.  Her studies included “reading literary and philosophical works in four languages” (Myerson).  According to Howard and Kavenik, “Perhaps the most versatile and brilliant of all American Renaissance was Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), who stimulated a wider participation by women in literary and political activities through “conversational circles”, journalism, and her study Woman in the Nineteenth Century” (631). 

            Elizabeth Cady Stanton, unlike Fuller, received an education, but an education that any other girl would have received during that time.  The difference between the education Stanton and Fuller received is, while Fuller’s father, a conservative judge, wanted to be sure she received an education entitled to a male, Stanton’s parents provided her with an education a female would have received.  Because of Stanton’s upbringing, Stanton felt the inequality and “injustice she suffered when boys who were intellectual inferiors at the Academy went on to college while no such opportunity was offered her” (Gordon).  Although both women had different upbringings, both women became activists in the women’s right’s movement.  Despite their different upbringings, their literature represented the same ideas, that is equality for women. 

            In Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences, Stanton says: “I now fully understand the practical difficulties most women had to contend with in the isolated household, and the impossibility of woman’s best development if in contact, the chief part of her life, with servants and children” (Stanton 2041).  As Stanton was confined to her house because of a malaria outbreak, she discovered what women had to endure everyday of their lives.  After Stanton’s confinement, she says: “The general discontent I felt with woman’s portion as wife, mother housekeeper, physician, and spiritual guide, the chaotic conditions into which everything fell without her constant supervision, and the wearied, anxious look of the majority of women impressed me with a strong feeling that some active measures should be taken to remedy the wrongs of society in general, and of women in particular… my only thought was a public meeting for protest and discussion.” (Stanton 2041).  Stanton realized that women could no longer remain in an inferior environment.  It was at this time that she decided something had to be done.  She formed a group and addressed women’s rights.    

            Stanton, along with Lucrecia Mott and other thoughtful women, decided to take action and call forth a meeting.  By 1848, a meeting was called at Seneca Falls, New York.  Stanton would call this meeting a “Woman’s Right’s Convention”.  This convention was “the first organized protest against the injustice which had brooded for ages over the character and destiny of one-half the race” (Stanton 2041).  Women attending this convention demanded, “immediate admission to all rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States…most notable were political rights” (Gordon 438).  Women wanted to be represented and have a voice in law making.  The ideas covered at the convention were ideas that would be debated by Americans well into the twentieth century. 

The “Declaration of Sentiments” by Elizabeth Stanton was presented at the convention at Seneca Falls, New York.  It was modeled after the Declaration of Independence and “detailed the inferior status in women… which effectively launched the women’s rights movement” (Britannica).  It contained the specifics of what women wanted, which was, “claim to individuality, to bring philosophically like men, similarly “endowed by their Creator” (Gordon 438).  After the convention, these women were persecuted for organizing this meeting.  However, this did not intimidate Stanton from attending other conventions. 

            Fuller and Stanton, as well as other women writers began writing literature that made a transition from an “identity based exclusively on family to one that embraces individual on professional fulfillment” (Howard and Kavenik 631). 

            In comparing the texts , Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Woman in the Nineteenth Century by Sarah Margaret Fuller, the conflict between the two is the same: that is, the aspiration for women’s equality to men. 

            Margaret Fuller’s work was also representative for women.  Fuller organized a series of “Conversations” for women.  Each conversation was devoted to a philosophical question and included topics of literature, education, mythology, and philosophy.  Fuller wanted “to enrich the lives of women and to dignify their place in society” (Britannica).  The participants would engage in the conversations then Fuller would provide her own views.  The purpose of “Conversations” was “demand for political equality and an ardent plea for the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual fulfillment of women” (Britannica).  In Fuller’s letter to Sophia Riley, she states: “The advantages of such a weekly meeting might be great meeting might be great enough to repay the trouble of attendance if… with great pretensions to mental refinement… where I have heard many of mature age wish for some such means of stimulus and cheer, and these people for a place where they could state their doubts and difficulties with hope of gaining aid from the experience r aspirations of others” (Fuller 1629).  Fuller wanted a place where intellectual women could meet and share their attitudes with each other.  Offering a place for these conversations enabled her to establish a place for women to vent. 

Fuller’s purpose for writing Women in the Nineteenth Century, published in 1845, was a means for Fuller to make others aware of women’s place in society.  This book ranks as the first American book to examine the place of women within society.  The first edition of Women in the Nineteenth Century was very popular when first released, selling out within a week.  This book brought about heated debates of women’s rights to the nations attention.  In Women in the Nineteenth Century, Fuller advocates young women to abandon their domestic life and find independence through education.  She tells them that they should be able to do what they want and further says, “Let them be sea-captains, if they will” (Britannica).

Although the words of Fuller would outlive her, perhaps the example of her life was her greatest legacy.  The example of her life showed other women that a thorough education could provide a woman to achieve greatness (Goldberg 55).  Fuller represented other women.  She set an excellent example for other women to see.  Her actions affected all around her.    

The nineteenth century was the time in history when the lives of women were changed, better yet, the perspective of women’s lives changed.  Women became full-fledged individuals and participants in political life and, ultimately, as a citizen (Fraisse and Perrot 1). 

            Women’s literature was a means for women in the nineteenth century to voice their opinions.  Their literature made others aware of the oppression of women and encouraged change.  The writings of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sarah Margaret Fuller inspired many changes.  These two women, along with many other courageous women, established a ground that eventually gave women the right to vote, among other rights.  It is because of the women, like Fuller and Stanton that women are where they are today, equal to men. 

Works Cited

Britannica Online. Women in American History by Encyclopedia Britannica. http://www.search.eb.con/women/ind_articles-c.html#s. 

Goldberg, Michael. Breaking New Ground: American Women 1800-1848. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Gordon, Ann D. “Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Woman’s Rights Movement.” American Reform and Reformers: A Biographical Dictionary. Ed. Paul A. Cimbala. Westport, Conneticut: Greenwood Press, 1996.

Fraisse, Genevieve, and Michelle Perrot. “Orders and Liberties.” A History of Women: Emerging Feminism from Revolution to World War. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1993.

Fuller, Margaret Sarah. “Woman in the Nineteenth Century”. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992. 1631-1652.

Fuller, Margaret Sarah. “To Sophia Riley”. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992. 1629-1630.

Myerson, Joel. “Sarah Margaret Fuller 1810-1850”. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992. 1626-1628.

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. “Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences”. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992. 2040-2042.

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. “Declaration of Sentiments”. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992. 2042-2044.

Wellman, Judith. “Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1815-1902”. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992. 2038-2040.

White, Craig. “Women Writers.” Handbook of American Women’s History. Ed. Angela M. Howard and Frances M. Kavenik. 2^nd Ed. Sage Publications, Inc.