This historical and extraordinary document was drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the convention for the women`s rights at Seneca Falls in New York on July 19 and 20, 1848.
This declaration is a political and written text, given its discursive nature
It was the beginning of the feminist movement in United States. In fact, it is believed this Declaration of Sentiments to be the first wave of american feminism, the first step to get rights for women and freedom as well.
Based on the Declaration of Independence of the United States (1776), Elizabeth Cady Stanton is showing the injustices and the needs of the american women to her country.
The 19th century was a period of rapid social change and experimentation for americans. New alternatives
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where twelve resolutions were adopted in terms of equality and women’s suffrage.
It can be found all along this Declaration of Sentiments the same format of the 1776’s Declaration of Independence text. The former changing parts of the latter to make a document where equality is not only a matter of all men but a matter of complete equality between men and women.
It is numbered the injustices committed to women in the part of the facts. Lines as: “He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise” or “He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her” state in the first phrase their struggle for the right to vote and in the second the absence of the right to get a proper education for women.
“He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead. He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns”:a married women had no control over her property or her children, she could not initiate divorce or sign a contract without her husband’s permission. Summoning up she was just like a overprotected
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Only her conscience and God will judge her.
In the conclusion part called Resolutions, we can find statements about property rights, rights in education and so interesting as the following in the seventh paragraph:
“Resolved, that the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of behavior that is required of woman in the social state also be required of man, and the same transgressions should be visited with equal severity on both man and woman.”
This means that men have to be so kind or sensitive as women, since equality has to be from both sides.
“Resolved, therefore, that, being invested by the Creator with the same capabilities and same consciousness of responsibility for their exercise, it is demonstrably the right and duty of woman, equally with man, to promote every righteous cause by every righteous means; and especially in regard to the great subjects of morals and religion, it is self-evidently her right to participate with her brother in teaching them, both in private and in public, by writing and by speaking [...]”. With this last lines, it is clear that women are a creation of God as men are, and that they have been created with the same rights in all ambitos. Women