Lisa Tetrault's The Myth Of Seneca Falls

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In The Myth of Seneca Falls, Lisa Tetrault challenges an enduring myth that was produced by a social movement in the United States. While including detailed facts of the women’s suffrage movement, she also analyzes the truths and myths of the Seneca Falls convention. This is so important because this is possibly one of the longest lasting mythologies in U.s history. Her primary goal is to undo the story and along with the memories to determine how and why these events came to be the myth of Seneca Falls. While Lisa Tetrault analyzes the myth of Seneca Falls she allows the reader to learn about the event as well. In The Myth of Seneca Falls the reader can understand why she wrote this book by analyzing her research and comments included. The book begins with a debate within the antebellum feminist-abolitionist coalition. The American Equal Rights Association (AERA) brought together women’s rights activists and abolitionists soon after the Civil War. This organization voted to support the Fifteenth Amendment, which led them to prioritize black suffrage over women’s suffrage. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. did not like this decision. They decided to form their own group called the National Women Suffrage Association (NWSA). Throughout the story Tetrault successfully shows how Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott …show more content…

She tells the reader that The Myth of Seneca Falls “is not intended to parse facts versus legends, deciphering whether the Seneca Falls meeting “truly” constitutes the beginning, or arguing for some other “truer” beginning” (pg 5). This means that her intentions are not to determine where the true beginning is by analyzing the facts against myths. The point she is trying to make is how and why there is even a question of where the women’s suffrage movement began. Throughout the book the reader can find evidence of Tetrault trying