Perfecting the Rhetorical Vision of Woman's Rights: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anna Howard Shaw, and Carrie Chapman Catt

Abstract

This essay argues that Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anna Howard Shaw, and Carrie Chapman Catt discursively enacted different stages in the evolution of a rhetorical vision for woman's rights. Through close examination of the rhetorical choices in the “classic speeches” of these three rhetors: Stanton's “The Solitude of Self” (1892), Shaw's “The Fundamental Principle of a Republic” (1915), and Catt's “The Crisis” (1916), it invites scholars to recognize the value of comparative critique in preserving the “complex tapestry” of the early woman's rights movement. This analysis claims that a compelling rhetorical vision of woman's rights emerged as each rhetor assumed one of the required leadership roles of social movements (prophet, charismatic, and pragmatist), co-opted an existing cause (existentialism, Methodism, and social Darwinism) to support key elements of a woman's rights philosophy, and adopted a familiar persona that appealed to a different primary audience (universal audience, general public, suffrage rank and file).