Pankhurst Women's Rights Analysis

Universal suffrage in the United States and England was realized at two different intervals: the United States in 1920 and England in 1928. Their self-proclaimed leaders, Emmeline Pankhurst and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, both shared similar goals for female equality yet each differed ideologically on the specific rights women were to obtain and how they were to make use of such rights. This is best expressed in three documents: “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions” (1848) and “The Solitude of Self” (1892) both by Stanton, and the Suffrage Speech at the Old Bailey (1912) given by Pankhurst. While Pankhurst was militant in her push for the English parliament (and public) to be more open to the discussion of women’s rights. Stanton was more

Stanton again emphasized women’s political rights and their ability for self-sovereignty that men obtained without question in society. The best example of her echoing her earlier “Sentiments…” comes in the beginning of the speech, where she states that women “must have the same rights as all other members, according to the fundamental principles of our government” and that “her rights and duties are still the same; individual happiness and development.” Stanton makes an allusion to a specific group of women toward the conclusion of her speech, where she states that a married women with children, wealth, “fortune and position, has a certain harbor of safety,” and that such a woman, she examples, contains all the abilities and virtues men so seek in other men. After this, she states that an uneducated women who is “trained to dependence with no resources in herself, must make a failure of any position in life.” This create a quagmire in her thinking. Is Stanton claiming that, in order for a woman to exercise her rights, she must obtain the life of a privileged women, or is she simply drawing the companion that a housewife, by virtue of the multitude of jobs she has to perform, is made able, almost more able, than men to navigate the public and private spheres? Not necessarily. Her ultimate goal is different this time compared to 1848, she desires women to develop physical as well as mental strengths, along with intellectual and political rights, while also being freed from the constraints of religion and the