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The Journey to Seneca Falls: Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Legal Emancipation of Women
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2013
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Women's RightColonialismSeneca FallsConstitutional LawLawIndigenous PeopleFeminist DebateSocial SciencesIndigenous StudyFeminist EthicsCivil LibertyGender StudiesHuman DignityAfrican American StudiesCivil RightsFeminist IdentityCultural HistoryCommon LawElizabeth Cady StantonFeminist ScholarshipHuman RightsFeminist PerspectiveFeminist Political TheoryIndigenous FeminismsFeminist TheorySocial JusticeFeminist PhilosophyLegal HistoryLegal Emancipation
“[T]he star that guides us all,” President Barack Obama declared in his Second Inaugural, is our commitment to “human dignity and justice.” This commitment has led us “through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall” towards the equality that we enjoy today. This Article concerns the pre-history to the Seneca Falls Convention of Women’s Rights, alluded to by President Obama. It is a journey that began during the infancy of the common law in medieval England. It leads through the construction, by generations of English lawyers and religious figures, of a strong and imposing monolith of patriarchal rule. By marriage women lost their independent legal personality and were, for purposes of law, incorporated into their husband in accord with the legal doctrine known as coverture. The husband represented the family in civic affairs, was exclusively empowered to make all legally effective decisions for the family, and generally governed his wife and household. This Article is a history of the early phases of the challenge brought against this mode of organizing domestic life. Mary Wollstonecraft, a selfmade woman of the eighteenth century, objected to male domination in her books, essays, and works of fiction. She coined the expression “rights of * Dr. Charles J. Reid, Jr. is Professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis. I would like to thank Ann Bateson and the library staff of the University of St. Thomas for the wonderful support they invariably demonstrate. I would like also to thank the staffs of the Seneca Falls Historical Society and the Seneca Falls National Historic Site for their patience in answering my innumerable questions. Finally, I would like to thank my diligent and thoughtful research assistants—Natolie Hochhausen, Vaughn Frazher, and Lauren Anthone. 1. President Barack Obama, Second Inaugural Address (Jan. 21, 2013), in THE WASH. POST, http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/president-obamas-second-inaugural-address-transcript/ 2013/01/21/f148d234-63d6-11e2-85f5-a8a9228e55e7_story.htmlJ. 2. Id.