Key During Reading Passages and Discussion Questions

• Paragraphs 1 and 2: Discuss with students the opening of Stanton’s speech. Who was the audience? What did Stanton say she would and would not be talking about in this speech? How did this introduction foreshadow the scope of her speech? How did she affirm the consistency of her views with republican ideals? How did the imagery of Robinson Crusoe help identify her purpose and contribute to the tone of the speech?
• Paragraphs 3-6: Stanton argued that men who write about the “woman’s sphere” focus on only their “incidental relations,” such as mother, wife, sister, and daughter, rather than their full range of “rights and duties” as individuals and citizens. They thereby restrict the education and training of women in ways that limit their development. She pointed out that the same logic did not apply to men; they would never think of limiting the men’s “sphere” in similar fashion. How was that a double-standard according to Stanton? What do you think Stanton meant in urging the “complete development” of every person’s “faculties as an individual?”
• Paragraphs 7-8: Here Stanton began to develop her argument for “giving women all the opportunities for higher education,” so that they might be freed from “all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, [and] superstition.” Only when a woman was freed from “the crippling influences of fear” could she assume responsibility for “her own individual life.” What types of fear do you think Stanton was talking about? How did this discussion reflect Stanton’s evolving concern with a broader array of issues beyond the vote? How did it foreshadow a more radical and modern feminism? Try to unpack Stanton’s phrase “birthright to self-sovereignty” and its relationship to the text as a whole. How did Stanton’s analogy to sailing a ship help advance her arguments about “the voyage of life?”
• Paragraphs 9-14: In paragraph 9, Stanton introduced the phrase “solitude of self.” What do you suppose Stanton meant by this phrase? Do students agree that we all enter the world and walk through life with this type of solitude? Stanton went on to employ a more critical tone, questioning the legitimacy of a system that denied women “political equality.” What else did Stanton declare harmful to women, and what sorts of examples or analogies did she use to support her point? What purpose did referencing Shakespeare’s Titus and Andronicus serve? Stanton again used the phrase “solitude of self” to conclude paragraph 14. By this point in the speech, do you think Stanton had made clear what she meant by the phrase? Why or why not?
• Paragraphs 15-18: The themes of personal responsibility and self-actualization were infused throughout her speech. What did Stanton argue was necessary for women to fulfill their responsibilities? How did this contrast with how men likely viewed women’s responsibilities at that time? What did Stanton say was the fate of women who were not able to access “collegiate education” and “liberal training?” What did she mean by talking about “the solitude of the weak and the ignorant,” and how did that differ from the more “respectable” solitude she mentioned in the last sentence of paragraph 18? How did she talk about women aging in this section, as she moved from talking about the “young wife and mother” to old age, when “the pleasures of youth have passed?”
• Paragraphs 19-25: What was the point Stanton hoped to make by recounting her meeting with Prince Krapotkin? What do students think it means to become “acquainted with [oneself] and [one’s] own resources?” Stanton referenced her own biblical studies for a similar purpose: to illustrate how even Jesus, during his last days of earth, “felt the awful solitude of self.” By mentioning these two male figures, in addition to the examples of females she uses throughout the speech, Stanton showed how relevant her argument was to men and women alike. Her lesson was universal: whether man or woman, “we must depend on ourselves, the dictates of wisdom point to complete individual development.” The difference, of course, was that women were restrained by law and custom from developing all of their faculties—mental  and physical.
• Paragraphs 26-33: As she began to conclude her speech, Stanton talked specifically about the injustice of excluding women from higher education and observed that women have made significant contributions to many fields, from art and music to the various sciences, despite those educational barriers. She then tells two stories about her own experiences—one on a ship and the other on a mountain. What was the point of these examples? How did they help explain what she meant by the “solitude of self?”