The Political Thought of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (review)

The life, philosophy, and rhetoric of Elizabeth Cady Stanton have captured the attention of scholars across the humanities and social sciences. Long hailed as a principal theorist and tactician of feminism's first wave, Cady Stanton's thoughts and actions offer the chance to interrogate and understand nineteenth-century American political culture. Sue Davis's new book, The Political Thought of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, seeks to elucidate the ways U.S. political culture influenced Cady Stanton's varied contributions, understanding her thought as characteristic of multiple, and sometimes even contradictory, political traditions.

Davis claims that Cady Stanton's political thought embodies four strands of American political thought: liberalism, republicanism, radicalism, and ascriptivism. In recognition of what others might term as Cady Stanton's keen rhetorical acumen, Davis argues that Cady Stanton used, adapted, and subverted ideas from these traditions to meet situational demands. Although rhetorical scholars will be able to glean from Davis a sense of Cady Stanton's participation in U.S. political culture as a rhetorical endeavor, they may also find it frustrating that Davis reduces this endeavor to the "strategic dimension" of Cady Stanton's thought (4). As a result, Davis's account, while remarkably and insightfully descriptive, falls short of rendering what public address scholars might think of as a thickened account of the relationship between nineteenth-century political culture and the philosophy of Cady Stanton.

In chapter 1, Davis distinguishes her book from previous attempts to characterize the confounding nature of Cady Stanton's political theory, especially those who attempt to understand her and other nineteenth-century woman's rights activists exclusively in terms of liberalism. Arguing that Cady Stanton's thought cannot be "located in one tradition," Davis asserts that Cady Stanton's ideas "mirror" and "reflect" the rich tapestry of intellectual traditions and ideologies that animates nineteenth-century American political culture (23). Her thesis is consistent with Rogers M. Smith's claim that U.S. politics are not rooted squarely in liberalism. Smith's Multiple-Tradition Thesis offers Davis an interpretive framework to discuss the interaction among traditions in Cady Stanton's thought, as well as the relationship between her thought and its context. Organizing the remaining chapters chronologically, Davis discusses prevailing themes that emerge in Cady Stanton's thought as indicative of intellectual influences and exigent demands of varying political contexts.

As the book unfolds, readers are introduced to a rather impressive spectrum of Cady Stanton's speeches and writings. Chapters 2 through 4 focus on Cady Stanton's work from Seneca Falls to the Civil War. Here readers learn that Cady Stanton relied most heavily on liberal arguments of natural rights and equality to challenge the culture of separate spheres and advocate for woman suffrage. However, Davis also highlights the ways that Cady Stanton deployed ascriptivism with republican values of community, suggesting that women's moral superiority enabled them to be "particularly good citizens." Davis sums up Cady Stanton's position: "voting women would greatly improve the political life of the nation" (68). As the nation approached civil war, Cady Stanton ascribed even more positive characteristics to women and began to articulate her radical critique of religion.

Chapters 5 through 9 document extensively the slow shift in Cady Stanton's thought from liberalism to an approach that was much more likely to embody radical ideas about social change and ascriptive notions of sex, race, and class differences. As positivism, social Darwinism, and Anglo-Saxonism emerge and develop in the United States, Cady Stanton's rhetoric animates problematic racist, proto-eugenics, and nativist themes. Discussing these themes in a way that seeks to understand them but not excuse them is assuredly a difficult task. Davis handles the challenge well. Like Smith, she argues that these themes are not simply ignorant of, or challenges to, a dominating liberalism that serves as the primary force in American political culture. Indeed, Davis demonstrates something quite the opposite, revealing the ways Cady Stanton's inegalitarian ideas...