Reformers and Radicals: Feminist Thinking through History - Presentation: Yamile and Mary Ann

Maria W. Stewart
“Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, the Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build”
(1831)
 Religious discourse as a legitimization of her protests. Biblical references to oppose
slavery (Jews in Egypt)
 The black woman as a privileged subject of morality and religiosity in the household.
Sexualization of the racialized female body. Clashing models of femininity: Ideal
Womanhood vs. Servitude.
 Clear distinction between Americans and sons and daughters of Africa. She exhorts the
latter to rebellion, through knowledge and dignity. React to the oppression is not only
the human nature, but the Christian way.

“Mrs. Stewart’s Farewell Address to Her Friends in the City of Boston” (1833)
 St. Paul declaration regarding woman and public speech.1
 Genealogy of Women through History.

Angelina Grimké
“Appeal to the Christian Woman of the South” (1836)
 Pragmatic strategies to apply an abolitionist practice in daily life. Acknowledgment of
the importance of woman in their domestic spheres. Woman as “opinion makers”.
 Sophocles’ Antigone epistemology. Hierarchies of obedience: God laws > Man laws.
“Letters to Catherine Beecher” (1836)
 Political representation.
 Critiques of romantic chivalry and gallantry.

Sarah Grimké
Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women (1837)
 Justification for equality is based on the fact that men and women must fulfill their
duties (spiritual, moral, economic, professional, etc.) in the same way.
 Debunks the idea of the “eternal feminine”.
 Points out how a “dangerous” woman is rhetorically transformed in a witch.
 Definition of a “fashionable women” or a non-threating femininity. Marriage as sine
qua non of human happiness and existence. Links between this type of woman and the
“female slave”.

Sojourner Truth
“Ain’t I a Woman?” (1851)
 Important aspect of her speech centers in the question of the transcription, translation.
The problem of representation of the Other.
 The equality between the sexes resides in the labor capacity.

1
Similarities with Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, “Answer to Sor Filotea” (1691).
Reformers and Radicals: Feminist Thinking through History - Presentation: Yamile and Mary Ann

Questions

How can we frame the ideology and praxis of each of these writers? What aspects can be
classified as reformists and which ones as radicals?

Every one of them elaborates why they are entering the public sphere through the printed word
(except Truth). How is literacy interweaved with emancipation?

What do you think of the religious discourse that supports the abolitionist and feminist
statements of these texts?

Formally, why do you think it was important to the authors the tracing of a genealogy of
powerful women in their texts? Considering that “women’s catalogs” were also very popular
in the querelle de femmes.

Do the authors work on the same notion of femininity? How do their ideas differ about what it
is to “be a woman”?

What do you think were the repercussions of experiences such as the Seneca Falls Convention
for the women’s movement?

Thinking about Truth’s speech, how can we, as scholars, address the problem of the
“mediation” or “intervention” in the discourses of the subjects we study?