About Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony

Opposite, but together

-------About Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony

Just image, if you have such a friend---she or he has a different background from you, her or his personal characters are really opposite with you, and she or he is living in a different kind of life with you---but you have to work with her or him for a long time, do you think that you can achieve your same goal peacefully without conflict and unhappiness? Maybe most people can’t do it. But two great women reformers: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had completed such a difficult situation, and finished really successfully. These two great women worked together for over fifty years.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born in a wealthy and comfortable lawyer’s family. She was the 8th of eleven children. Because all four sons in the family died, Stanton always needed to try to do all the things her brothers might have, even though it was never enough for her father. Her father often said that “I wish you were a son.” (Not for ourselves alone) But because her brothers died, she wanted to have the education they would have had and so Stanton had more education than most young girls of that time. Her high-education experience helped her a lot in her future suffragist’s life. Because she was treated as boy, her personality became rapid, impulsive, daring, humorous, exuberant, and feisty.

On the other hand, Susan B. Anthony was born in an austere Quaker family. Her father's early success as the operator of small textile mills came to an end in the financial crash of 1837. She received a Quaker education and taught school for a decade, joining the many poorly paid young women who taught in district schools and academies, before she found her vocation as a reformer. (Susan B. Anthony Biography) Actually, the Quaker education helped Anthony shaped her personal character as loyal, stubborn, focused conservative and hard fast.

How different the background and mindset of these two women were! In addition to these differences in their early backgrounds, they also made different choices as adult women. Anthony remained single while Stanton married and had seven children. This difference gave each of them advantages and disadvantages: for Anthony, to be a single woman helped her become more visible and mobile while Stanton’s life was limited by her seven children. But we can easily image that she must felt lonely in her life without lover’s company; for Stanton, as president of the National Woman Suffrage Association, she spoke on topics like maternity, the woman's crusade against liquor, child rearing, and divorce law, as well as constitutional questions and presidential campaigns. Her marriage helped her understand these topics more deeply than Anthony, and these topics could achieve more supporting from normal women at the same time. And the