Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement (review)

As part of Oxford's prestigious Pivotal Moments in American History series, on the surface, McMillen's task would seem fairly straightforward: what was it about the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 that made it a defining moment in United States history? McMillen takes this question to task early in her work, arguing that the Seneca Falls Convention "changed the way American society … thought about and treated women in the mid-nineteenth century," noting further that the Convention "unleashed" the struggle for women's equality that continues into the twenty-first century (3).

Ignoring the growing body of recent scholarship that challenges this thesis, McMillen's narrative focuses on four aptly-chosen leaders of the nineteenth century women's rights movement: Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone. However, McMillen does not ignore less familiar reformers, and their inclusion adds both interest and historical depth to her work.

In an effort to contextualize the Seneca Falls Convention, McMillen devotes nearly 70 pages of her narrative to what came before it. Certainly readers who are unfamiliar with women's roles in the early nineteenth century will appreciate the broad sweep of issues McMillen raises in the book's early chapters. However, the presentation of this material is often difficult to follow, as McMillen jumps from theme to theme and back again, often without cohesion or explanation.

Despite the book's title, very little of the narrative is concerned with the Seneca Falls Convention or the "origins" of the women's rights movement. Only two chapters are devoted specifically to the antebellum or origins period, while much of the narrative focuses on the decades following the Civil War. In reality, McMillen provides a general synthesis of the nineteenth century women's rights movement, and while readers interested deepening their understanding of this pivotal moment will likely be disappointed, those unfamiliar with the struggle for women's political rights before 1890 will enjoy and benefit from the breadth of McMillen's study.

Although the grand scope of McMillen's topic would present a challenge to the expertise of any historian, what is perhaps the most unsatisfying aspect of this work is the nearly total lack of archival primary source research. Because of this, McMillen has not only repeated many of the factual errors of her predecessors, insuring that these misstatements and inaccuracies appear in other works for years to come, but most importantly, her decision not to engage with her subjects directly, prevents McMillen from offering the kind of analysis her subjects and this important historical moment deserve.

As a pivotal moment, few would argue that the Seneca Falls Convention marked an important milestone in the quest for women's rights. However valuable McMillen's work is as a general interest synthesis of the nineteenth century women's rights movement is, it leaves much to be desired both in terms of responding to current scholarship and in successfully proving her own sweeping thesis.