Esther or Isaiah?: The abolitionist‐feminist rhetoric of Angelina Grimké

Abstract

Angelina Grimke, one of America's first women orators, adopted different biblical personae in two of her antislavery speeches of 7838. In the first, she assumed the Esther persona, a supplicatory posture, to request equal rights for slaves and for women. In the second, she took the prophetic stance of Isaiah and insisted that these rights be granted. By taking these strategies, she foreshadowed two prototypical forms of feminist appeal, forms still evident in contemporary rhetoric.