Address on Woman’s Rights Summary & Analysis

Here, Stanton begins to outline one of the fundamental problems in the relations between men and women of her time. American society in the mid-1840s reinforced, at every level, the idea that men and women were completely different beings—and that men were the superior ones. As a result, men have developed a narrow-minded view of women and women’s issues. Men struggle to understand women because they have been taught only to see the world through the lens of their own righteousness. Stanton compares this state of mind to a state of dangerous and “hopeless” inebriation and impairment. Men must shake themselves out of this stupor and work to understand women as their equals.

Men have been raised to consider only their own humanity. They don’t think of things from women’s point of view, because they’ve been taught that women are far too different from them. But men have the power to learn about the things around them. So Stanton is suggesting here that men need to carefully observe and actively work to understand women’s issues in order to help their female counterparts in the struggle for equality.

In this passage, Stanton begins expanding several of her speech’s core rhetorical arguments. First, she makes the assertion that women’s issues don’t just affect women—because they affect women’s husbands and children as well, they are universal problems that need a serious global reckoning. Women’s rights aren’t just an issue in America—women all over the world, she posits, aren’t just excluded from public life but actively ridiculed and attacked when they try to change that fact. Stanton also brings religion into her argument here, widening the moral scope of her argument beyond the idea of earthly justice. By underscoring that women are exhausted and put upon, she highlights the serious toll women’s degradation and exclusion takes not just on individual women but on global society as a whole.

In this passage, Stanton introduces some of her speech’s central images. She contrasts the dreary darkness of women’s history against the bright, blazing sun of enlightenment that marks men’s experiences in society. Stanton introduces sunlight as a symbol of the illuminating potential of equal rights. If granted equal rights, women will be able to experience the enlightening possibilities of education and suffrage—and they’ll also, more literally, be able to live lives outside of the private home spheres to which they’ve been relegated for centuries. 

In this passage, Stanton introduces yet another facet of her complex argument in favor of women’s rights. While her argument about “heathen” societies of the world may strike contemporary readers as reductive and racist, Stanton sought to widen her audience’s understanding of women’s experiences around the world. She wanted to show that while women in the United States are better off than women in other countries, the global fight for women’s rights was going to be a long and difficult one given how degrading and humiliating so many women’s positions around the world were.

Here, Stanton ridicules the idea that men are naturally superior to women in any way. Such arguments had been used for centuries to excuse the subordination of women—but in highlighting various examples of women’s intellectual, moral, and physical strength, Stanton points out that this line of reasoning is nothing but a fallacy. She suggests that any men who seek to keep women in subordinate positions by using such flawed logic must be defeated. Such men are responsible for the slow but steady degradation of global society because they keep society focused on backwards, “barbaric” ways of thinking.

Because men have been given an unfair advantage in society up to this point, Stanton suggests, it’s impossible to know whether there is in fact a superior sex. Stanton points out that women have been barred from the spaces in which men are able to brag about their own success: education, religion, and politics were all off-limits to women of Stanton’s era. So while men claim at they’re superior to women in many ways, the truth is that they’ve just been given an unfair head start—until women are able to enjoy many decades of a leveled playing field, any arguments on which sex is the superior one will remain irrelevant.

This passage gets at the core of Stanton’s sadness and dissatisfaction with the state of relations between the sexes. Men are given unfair advantages over their female counterparts—and they don’t even try to even the score. Men are told they can achieve anything, and they’re given unfettered access to education, suffrage, and participation in public life. But they don’t even try to share their knowledge with women or to fight on behalf of women’s rights. Men, this passage suggests, know how difficult and miserable things are for many women—but they do nothing with their power and privilege to ease women’s suffering.

In this passage, Stanton suggests that while society deems men as having superior intellect, there is actually precedent for their susceptibility to emotionality and irrationality. In citing the biblical story of Adam and Eve—which has been used to demonize women as greedy traitors for millennia—Stanton humorously reckons with how even contemporary religion seeks to keep women down. In reality, society needs to more closely examine its foundational myths and reassess which traits define which sex.

In her discussion of men’s ostensible moral superiority over women, Stanton calls out the idea of moral authority as yet another way that men seek to keep women in subordinate positions even as they hypocritically flout any real moral code. Stanton suggests that even the men in society who should be held to the most stringent moral standards—religious leaders—are just as prone to vice as anyone else. By pointing out the hypocrisy and abdication of duty that blights moral leadership in America, Stanton debunks the idea that men are naturally somehow more virtuous or righteous than women.

Here, Stanton delves even more deeply into the intricacies of men and women’s comparative morality. While men have been given license to do whatever they please and face no consequences, women have been held to stringent moral standards since time immemorial. For this reason, it may seem that women are inherently more virtuous and giving—but in fact, societal pressure has made them this way. Stanton uses religious rhetoric here to further underscore her assertion that men and women were created exactly the same—and that it only because society treats them differently that they’ve adapted to act differently. 

Stanton’s activism, which would later come to be known as first-wave feminism, wasn’t defined by the assertion that women deserved more than men or that they were inherently superior to men. Instead, Stanton defined her politics by the belief that men and women had been created by God as equals, and so should treat one another as equals in all matters. One sex’s behaviors and actions, she suggested, always had an impact on the other. The world, Stanton believed, had become corrupt and vulgar due to society’s refusal to hold men accountable for their behavior. So women didn’t need the freedom to act vulgarly, too—rather, men needed to get their act together and behave in a way befitting a creature of God.

Here, Stanton once again debunks a baseless claim of male superiority. She suggests that physical prowess is more complicated than it seems. Men are generally larger than women, so they’re seen as being stronger. But women, Stanton suggests, have plenty of unrealized and unexplored potential when it comes to physical strength. Additionally, women are skilled in enduring terrible things. Stanton isn’t just referencing the dearth of women’s rights—she’s also tacitly acknowledging how women must often face threats of violence, especially sexual violence, due to their subordinate positions in society. Women are stronger than they seem, and it would be ridiculous to assert that men are inherently stronger than women given the head-start they’ve had in life.

By invoking the metaphor of the horse here, Stanton suggests that physical strength alone isn’t a marker of power, endurance, or potential. Horses are stronger animals than men by far, yet humans’ superior intellect allows them to command horses. Men use the argument of their greater physical stature to justify their cruel treatment of women—but Stanton suggests that women will no longer tolerate such a ridiculous, faulty argument.

In this passage, Stanton points out the numerous double standards to which women are constantly held. Women all over the world prove their physical might in many ways—yet any time they try to assert their physical or intellectual worth, they’re constantly reminded that strong bodies and minds are considered exclusively masculine traits. This is yet another way that men have rigged society against women: they’ve claimed that weakness is inherently feminine, while strength is inherently masculine in flagrant disregard for the fundamental similarities between the two sexes.

In this passage, Stanton asserts, once again, that women don’t want to switch places with men or usurp men’s roles in society. All they want is the freedom that comes with equal rights. Throughout her speech, Stanton is systematically debunking the many excuses men use to ignore or undermine the women’s rights movement. It’s important that in this section, she highlights the “wrongs” perpetuated against women by men who seek to corrupt or pervert the mission of the women’s rights movement. 

Even as Stanton uses this section of her speech to discuss women’s political and fiscal rights, she underscores the moment with an appeal couched in religious language. Both women and men are “divine” creatures because they’ve been created in God’s own image. Yet men debase women by denying them man-made rights. Stanton is underscoring that men shouldn’t have the authority to keep women down or to govern them without their consent—women have a divine right to occupy a equal position in society beside men, not below them.

Here, Stanton points out that while different kinds of men are certainly unequal to one another in intelligence and morality, they’re seen as one homogenous group and are all allotted the right to vote. Even the best of women, though, are seen as being somehow lower than men, and they’re excluded from public life. This is an injustice that, in Stanton’s estimation, can no longer be tolerated.

Here, Stanton is pointing out the compounding indignities women must bear as they watch the men in their lives enjoy freedoms that they cannot. In Stanton’s view, it is not only humiliating, but also unconstitutional, for women to be so excluded from a say in their own country’s government. By appealing not only to her audience’s emotions, but to their sense of justice as well, Stanton is hoping to get more people dedicated to the cause of women’s rights.

Stanton is deftly anticipating and overturning every possible argument to women’s suffrage (and more general participation in public life) that comes her way. By suggesting that women’s participation in American society might actually stand to improve that society from the inside out, Stanton is forcing those who oppose women’s rights to admit that they care more about keeping women out of public spaces than potentially bettering their society. Stanton is placing her opponents in a kind of catch-22: if women are so gentle and pure, she’s suggesting, society would ostensibly become more peaceful and generous with their input.

Here, Stanton is dismantling the condescending, paternalistic rhetoric that men use to keep women out of public life. Men suggest that women cannot weather the “tempests,” or storms, of life in the public sphere. But as Stanton shows, such language is patronizing and demeaning, suggesting that women must be shielded and protected from everything. In reality, men aren’t protecting women—they’re threatening them. By comparing men to wolves and women to lambs, Stanton is externalizing the fear women experience—and the cruelty men leverage against them—in debates about what women should have the right to do.

In this passage, Stanton explores how women, both in America and abroad, have internalized so much of men’s rhetoric against women that they actually come to see their “bondage” as a form of protection. Men want women to believe that in being excluded from public life, they’re being shielded from danger. But in reality, men are just keeping women from using their voices. While Stanton’s assessment of how “Eastern” women are treated is racist and reductive by today’s standards, she uses the anecdote about women who see enslavement as an assessment of their great value to point out how insidious men’s methods of control truly are.

In this passage, Stanton appeals to her audience’s sense of pride by stating that enlightened Christian women who live in the Western world are already leagues ahead of their fellow women elsewhere around the globe. She’s doing so to bolster their sense of self-worth—because she knows that it is only through a sense of dignity and worth that women will be able to join the fight. It is time, Stanton says, for women to stop looking to men for approval—as long as they look to God as their only moral authority, they will be righteous, and their cause will succeed .

In this passage, Stanton continues to place power back in the hands of the women in her audience. For too long, society and religion have told women that they’re somehow inherently lesser or subordinate to men. But by reminding the women in her audience that they alone have the power to decide what is godly, she’s restoring some of their agency and helping them realize how men have weaponized potential sources of strength against them. The idea of women being able to assess for themselves “what is in the Lord” was an incredibly powerful one. Men had been seen for so long as the only worthy interpreters of the Bible—but Stanton wanted women to claim their right to decide such personal matters, like religion and belief, for themselves.

In this passage, Stanton points out one of men’s great moral failings. They know that women are being unfairly denied equal access to education—and yet they don’t take any initiative to share what they learn in school and in seminary with their female counterparts. Men don’t think twice about the rights they’re afforded—and Stanton suggests that many men don’t even appreciate their educations. Yet all the while, men claim to be superior to women based on their educations. This vicious cycle is, in Stanton’s estimation, vile and predatory. Men should be helping women to grow and learn rather than seeing them as useless, dull, or subordinate.

The education society, which helped young men without good finances gain access to educations in universities and ministries, helped many disadvantaged men. Women, as some of the primary donors to the education society, were in a way responsible for helping those young men. So here, Stanton is suggesting that because men don’t share the knowledge they gain over the course their educations, women should stop sharing their time and resources as well until there is equality for all.

Here, Stanton overturns a claim that was, at the time, treated as fact: that women across America presided over harmonious, peaceful homes, and that entry into academia or the public sphere would somehow disrupt their ability to maintain that harmony. But Stanton believes that homes are not the idyllic, blissful retreats that Americans consider them to be: every home is fundamentally an unequal, discordant place as long as women must shoulder all the burdens of homemaking and reap none of the joys of equality.

In this passage, Stanton coldly satirizes the idea that women’s sense of “holy love” for and “sacred duty” to their families is any more intrinsic than men’s supposed superiority. Women have been forced to put all of their available energy into doting on their husbands and children because there are no other opportunities or pursuits available to them. So while women have indeed become capable, generous caregivers, it’s not because of any innate “holiness” or sanctity—it’s because society has relegated women to the domestic sphere.

Stanton uses this moment to state that she believes domestic harmony is a fallacy perpetuated in order to keep women down. There can only be true happiness when neither men nor women rule over one another. For homes to become happy places that raise prosperous children, there must be complete equality between the sexes.

Here, Stanton cites several examples of female monarchs in Europe who have led their countries to unity, prosperity, and glory. If women in other countries can not only participate in public life but indeed occupy the highest station in their land, she’s suggesting, American women must at least demand the immediate right to suffrage. Men who insist that women are unfit for public life or otherwise unequipped to have a say in how their countries are run are perpetuating a harmful lie about women’s inferiority simply for the purpose of barring women from equality.

Not only are women capable of doing public-facing jobs and steering their governments, Stanton suggests, but men in other countries often actually seek the counsel of their female counterparts. This underscores Stanton’s assertion that discrimination against women is, in many ways, a uniquely American problem. She suggests that the U.S. is laden with prejudices—not just against women—and it is time for the men in power to recognize the nation’s moral failings and reckon with how these unseemly prejudices are hampering the nation’s progress.

Here, Stanton points out several of the problems currently plaguing the U.S. She makes reference to the abomination of slavery, the difficult war with Mexico that was just ending at the time of her speech, and the lack of temperance laws (an issue that was particularly important to Stanton as an advocate of temperance, or abstention from alcohol). She’s saying that there are so many problems in the U.S. that men—who have created all these problems in the first place—can’t possibly fix the nation or redeem their own failings alone. The U.S. conceives of itself as a new kind of nation—yet it is squandering an opportunity to be the world’s first authentically “virtuous” nation by pioneering unequivocal equality between the sexes.

In this passage, Stanton asserts that the state of women’s lives reflect the state of their nation’s health. Right now, in the U.S., women are “half developed” due to their exclusion from public life and education. And because of this, the children they raise and the husbands they attend to can only ever be “half developed” as well. Women’s degradation, Stanton asserts, is at the core of every single one of the United States’ political, social, and moral failings.

Stanton begins to wrap up her speech by instigating a rousing call to arms. Women in the United States, she says, must no longer accept unequal treatment. Instead, they must look to the legacies of the powerful women who have come before them and draw strength from their stories. Men are not going to take up the cause of women’s rights—it must be women themselves who advocate tirelessly for their own equality.

Here, Stanton brings back the symbolic imagery of sunlight, dawn, and awakening. She’s stating that a new era of women’s equality will be as warming and illuminating as a bright dawn after a long, numbing “slumber.” Women must see their freedom as the glorious thing it is so that they are more motivated to fight for it with all that they have.

By contrasting the bright sunlight of equality against the dank, cramped darkness of subordination, Stanton is encouraging the women in her audience to aspire toward more than they currently have. Men have relegated women to the shadows of society for too long, but women know that they deserve equality. So men, too, must be brought under the “flashing sunlight” of the women’s movement and begin to understand that God himself has ordained women to be their equals and companions.

Here, Stanton continues to use rousing, evocative language as she paints a portrait of men and women ascending together into shining palaces as equal rulers of their own destinies. By using the attractive imagery of palaces—and the vague, enticing language of “see[ing] what few have seen”—Stanton is allowing her audience to imagine for themselves the illuminating, limitless potential that equality will bring to every aspect of life: relationships, politics, and the edifications of men and women alike.