Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

(1815–1902)

   Philanthropist and Feminist Biblical Scholar.

   Stanton was closely involved in the American anti-slavery movement and she was a veteran campaigner for women’s rights. When she was in her eighties, she and a team of colleagues produced The Women’s Bible, which has proved to be an important milestone in the history of feminist theory. Published in 1895 and 1898, it was a collection of comments on verses of the Bible which referred to women. It pointed out that the traditional understanding of the text has been used to reinforce notions of women’s inferiority. From this pioneering work, many later feminist scholars have attempted to show that this negative attitude has its roots in later biblical interpretation rather than in the text itself.

   L.W. Banner, Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Radical for Women’s Rights (1980);

   E. Griffith, In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1984);

   M.D. Pellauer, Towards a Tradition of Feminist Theology: The Religious and Social Thought of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Anna Howard Shaw (1991);

   L.M. Russell, Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (1985).