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1892 No 11
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON Born November 12, 1815 in Johnstown Died October 26, 1902 in New
York City
SOLITUDE OF SELF Address Delivered by Mrs. Stanton Before the Committee of the Judiciary of the
United States Congress Monday, January 18, 1892
LIBRARY CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT SUBJECT Section VII Suffage Speeches Records NO 1 (II)
A Souvenir in Memory of Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Reprinted from the Congressional Record and presented as a Birthday Centennial gift.
10,000 copies of this speech, which Mrs. Stanton considered her best and delivered when she was
77 years of age, were printed, placed in envelopes and franked to all parts of the United States by
Congress.
Mrs. Stanton's Address
Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: We have been speaking before Committees of the
Judiciary for the last twenty years, and we have gone over all the arguments in favor of a sixteenth
amendment which are familiar to all you gentlemen; therefore, it will not be necessary that I should
repeat them again.
The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul;
our Protestant idea, the right of individual conscience and judgment—our republican idea, individual
citizenship. In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an
individual, in a world of her own, the arbiter of her own destiny, an imaginary Robinson Crusoe
with her woman Friday on a solitary island. Her rights under such circumstances are to use all her
faculties for her own safety and happiness.
Secondly, if we consider her as a citizen, as a member of a great nation, she must have the same
rights as all other members, according to the fundamental principles of our Government. Title http://www.loc.gov/resource/rbnawsa.n8358Thirdly, viewed as a woman, an equal factor in civilization, her rights and duties are still the same—
individual happiness and development.
Fourthly, it is only the incidental relations of life, such as mother, wife, sister, daughter, that may
involve some special duties and training. In the usual discussion in regard to woman's sphere, such
as men as Herbert Spencer, Frederic Harrison, and Grant Allen uniformly subordinate her rights
and duties as an individual, as a citizen, as a woman, to the necessities of these incidental relations,
some of which a large class of woman may never assume. In discussing the sphere of man we do
not decide his rights as an individual, as a citizen, as a man by his duties as a father, a husband, a
brother, or a son, relations some of which he may never fill. Moreover he would be better fitted
for these very relations and whatever special work he might choose to do to earn his bread by the
complete development of all his faculties as an individual.
Just so with woman. The education that will fit her to discharge the duties in the largest sphere of
human usefulness will best fit her for whatever special work she may be compelled to do.
The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual
the right, to choose his own surroundings.
The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full
development of her faculties, forces of mind and body; for giving her the most enlarged freedom of
thought and action; a complete emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence,
superstition; from all the crippling influences of fear, is the 2 solitude and personal responsibility
of her own individual life. The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government
under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the
chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her
birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself. No matter how
much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have
them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know
something of the laws of navigation. To guide our own craft, we must be captain, pilot, engineer; with
chart and compass to stand at the wheel; to match the wind and waves and know when to take in
the sail, and to read the signs in the firmament over all. It matters not whether the solitary voyager is
man or woman.
Nature having endowed them equally, leaves them to their own skill and judgment in the hour of
danger, and, if not equal to the occasion, alike they perish. Title http://www.loc.gov/resource/rbnawsa.n8358The appreciate the importance of fitting every human soul for independent action, think for a
moment of the immeasurable solitude of self. We come into the world alone, unlike all who have
gone before us; we leave it alone under circumstances peculiar to ourselves. No mortal ever has
been, no mortal over will be like the soul just launched on the sea of life. There can never again
be just such environments as make up the infancy, youth and manhood of this one. Nature never
repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another. No one
has ever found two blades of ribbon grass alike, and no one will never find two human beings
alike. Seeing, then, what must be the infinite diversity in human, character, we can in a measure
appreciate the loss to a nation when any large class of the people in uneducated and unrepresented
in the government. We ask for the complete development of every individual, first, for his own
benefit and happiness. In fitting out an army we give each soldier his own knapsack, arms, powder,
his blanket, cup, knife, fork and spoon. We provide alike for all their individual necessities, then each
man bears his own burden.
Again we ask complete individual development for the general good; for the consensus of the
competent on the whole round of human interest; on all questions of national life, and here each
man must bear his share of the general burden. It is sad to see how soon friendless children are left
to bear their own burdens before they can analise their feelings; before they can even tell their joys
and sorrows, they are thrown on their own resources. The great lesson that nature seems to teach
us at all ages is self-dependence, self-protection, self-support. What a touching instance of a child's
solitude; of that hunger of heart for love 3 and recognition, in the case of the little girl who helped
to dress a christmas tree for the children of the family in which she served. On finding there was
no present for herself she slipped away in the darkness and spent the night in an open field sitting
on a stone, and when found in the morning was weeping as if her heart would break. No mortal
will ever know the thoughts that passed through the mind of that friendless child in the long hours
of that cold night, with only the silent stars to keep her company. The mention of her case in the
daily papers moved many generous hearts to send her presents, but in the hours of her keenest
sufferings she was thrown wholly on herself for consolation.
In youth our most bitter disappointments, our brighest hopes and ambitions are known only to
otherwise, even our friendship and love we never fully share with another; there is something of
every passion in every situation we conceal. Even so in our triumphs and our defeats.
The successful candidate for Presidency and his opponent each have a solitude peculiarly his own,
and good form forbide either in speak of his pleasure or regret. The solitude of the king on his
throne and the prisoner in his cell differs in character and degree, but it is solitude nevertheless. Title http://www.loc.gov/resource/rbnawsa.n8358We ask no sympathy from others in the anxiety and agony of a broken friendship or shattered love.
When death sunders our nearest ties, alone we sit in the shadows of our affliction. Alike mid the
greatest triumphs and darkest tragedies of life we walk alone. On the devine heights of human
attainments, eulogized land worshiped as a hero or saint, we stand alone. In ignorance, poverty, and
vice, as a pauper or criminal, alone we starve or steal; alone we suffer the sneers and rebuffs of our
fellows; alone we are hunted and hounded thro dark courts and alleys, in by-ways and highways;
alone we stand in the judgment seat; alone in the prison cell we lament our crimes and misfortunes;
alone we expiate them on the gallows. In hours like these we realize the awful solitude of individual
life, its pains, its penalties, its responsibilities; hours in which the youngest and most helpless are
thrown on their own resources for guidance and consolation. Seeing then that life must ever be a
march and a battle, that each soldier must be equipped for his own protection, it is the height of
cruelty to rob the individual of a single natural right.
To throw obstacle in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes; to deny the rights
of property, like cutting off the hands. To deny political equality is to rob the ostracised of all self-
respect; of credit in the market place; of recompense in the world of work; of a voice among those
who make and administer the law; a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge
who decides their punishment. Shakespeare's play of Titus and Andronicus contains a terrible satire
on woman's position in the nineteenth century—“Rude men” (the 4 play tells us) “seized the king's
daughter, cut out her tongue, out off her hands, and then bade her go call for water and wash her
hands.” What a picture of woman's position. Robbed of her natural rights, handicapped by law and
custom at every turn, yet compelled to fight her own battles, and in the emergencies of life to fall
back on herself for protection.
The girl of sixteen, thrown on the world to support herself, to make her own place in society, to resist
the temptations that surround her and maintain a spotless integrity, must do all this by native force
or superior education. She does not acquire this power by being trained to trust others and distrust
herself. If she wearies of the struggle, finding it hard work to swim upstream, and allow herself to
drift with the current, she will find plenty of company, but not one to share her misery in the hour
of her deepest humilation. If she tried to retrieve her position, to conceal the past, her life is hedged
about with fears last willing hands should tear the veil from what she fain would hide. Young and
friendless, she knows the bitter solitude of self.
How the little courtesies of life on the surface of society, deemed so important from man towards
woman, fade into utter insignificance in view of the deeper tragedies in which she must play her part
alone, where no human aid is possible. Title http://www.loc.gov/resource/rbnawsa.n8358The youngwife and mother, at the head of some establishment with a kind husband to shield her
from the adverse winds of life, with wealth, fortune and position, has a certain harbor of safety,
occurs against the ordinary ills of life. But to manage a household, have a deatrable influence in
society, keep her friends and the affections of her husband, train her children and servants well, she
must have rare common sense, wisdom, diplomacy, and a knowledge of human nature. To do all this
she needs the cardinal virtues and the strong points of character that the most succesful stateman
possesses.
An uneducated woman, trained to dependence, with no resources in herself must make a failure
of any position in life. But society says women do not need a knowledge of the world, the liberal
training that experience in public life must give, all the advantages of collegiate education; but when
for the lock of all this, the woman's happiness is wrecked, alone she bears her humiliation; and the
attitude of the weak and the ignorant in indeed pitiful in the wild chase for the price of life they are
ground to powder.
In age, when the pleasures of youth are passed, children grown up, married and gone, the hurry
and hustle of life in a measure over, when the hands are weary of active service, when the old
armchair and the fireside are the chosen resorts, then men and women alike must fall back on
their own resources. If they cannot find companionship in books, if they have no interest in the vital
questions of the hour, no interest in 5 watching the consummation of reforms, with which they
might have been identified, they soon pass into their dotage. The more fully the faculties of the mind
are developed and kept in use, the longer the period of vigor and active interest in all around us
continues. If from a lifelong participation in public affairs a woman feels responsible for the laws
regulating our system of education, the discipline of our jails and prisons, the sanitary conditions
of our private homes, public buildings, and thoroughfares, an interest in commerce, finance, our
foreign relations, in any or all of these questions, here solitude will at least be respectable, and she
will not be driven to gossip or scandal for entertainment.
The chief reason for opening to every soul the doors to the whole round of human duties an
pleasures is the individual development thus attained, the resources thus provided under all
circumstances to mitigate the solitude that at times must come to everyone. I once asked Prince
Krapotkin, the Russian nihilist, how he endured his long years in prison, deprived of books, pen,
ink, and paper. “Ah,” he said, “I thought out many questions in which I had a deep interest. In the
pursuit of an idea I took no note of time. When tired of solving knotty problems I recited all the
beautiful passages in prose or verse I have ever learned. I became acquainted with myself and my
own resources. I had a world of my own, a vast empire, that no Russian jailor or Czar could invade.” Title http://www.loc.gov/resource/rbnawsa.n8358Such is the value of liberal thought and broad culture when shut off from all human companionship,
bringing comfort and sunshine within even the four walls of a prison cell.
As women of times share a similar fate, should they not have all the consolation that the most liberal
education can give? Their suffering in the prisons of St. Petersburg; in the long, weary marches to
Siberia, and in the mines, working side by side with men, surely call for all the self-support that the
most exalted sentiments of heroism can give. When suddenly roused at midnight, with the startling
cry of “fire! fire!” to find the house over their heads in flames, do women wait for men to point the
way to safety? And are the men, equally bewildered and half suffocated with smoke, in a position to
more than try to save themselves?
At such times the most timid women have shown a courage and heroism in saving their husbands
and children that has surprise everybody. Inasmuch, then, as woman shares equally the joys and
sorrows of time and eternity, is it not the height of presumption in man to propose to represent her
at the ballot box an the throne of grace, do her voting in the state, her praying in the church, and to
assume the position of priest at the family alter.
Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the concience like individual responsibility. Nothing
adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one's self-sovereignity; the right to an equal
place, every where conceded; a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment, 6 by
inheritance, wealth, family, and position. Seeing, then that the responsibilities of life rests equally
on man and woman, that their destiny is the same, they need the same preparation for time and
eternity. The talk of sheltering woman from the fierce sterns of life is the sheerest mockery, for they
beat on her from every point of the compass, just as they do on man, and with more fatal results, for
he has been trained to protect himself, to resist, to conquer. Such are the facts in human experience,
the responsibilities of individual. Rich and poor, intelligent and ignorant, wise and foolish, virtuous
and vicious, man and woman, it is ever the same, each soul must depend wholly on itself.
Whatever the theories may be of woman's dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her
life he can not bear her burdens. Alone she goes to the gates of death to give life to every man that
is born into the world. No one can share her fears, on one mitigate her pangs; and if her sorrow is
greater than she can bear, alone she passes beyond the gates into the vast unknown.
From the mountain tops of Judea, long ago, a heavenly voice bade His disciples, “Bear ye one
another's burdens,” but humanity has not yet risen to that point of self-sacrifice, and if ever so
willing, how few the burdens are that one soul can bear for another. In the highways of Palestine; in
prayer and fasting on the solitary mountain top; in the Garden of Gethsemane; before the judgment
seat of Pilate; betrayed by one of His trusted disciples at His last supper; in His agonies on the cross, Title http://www.loc.gov/resource/rbnawsa.n8358even Jesus of Nazareth, in these last sad days on earth, felt the awful solitude of self. Deserted by
man, in agony he cries, “My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken me?” And so it ever must be in
the conflicting scenes of life, on the long weary march, each one walks alone. We may have many
friends, love, kindness, sympathy and charity to smooth our pathway in everyday life, but in the
tragedies and triumphs of human experience each moral stands alone.
But when all artificial trammels are removed, and women are recognized as individuals, responsible
for their own environments, thoroughly educated for all the positions in life they may be called to fill;
with all the resources in themselves that liberal though and broad culture can give; guided by their
own conscience an judgment; trained to self-protection by a healthy development of the muscular
system and skill in the use of weapons of defense, and stimulated to self-support by the knowledge
of the business world and the pleasure that pecuniary independence must ever give; when women
are trained in this way they will, in a measure, be fitted for those hours of solitude that come alike to
all, whether prepared or otherwise. As in our extremity we must depend on ourselves, the dictates of
wisdom point of complete individual development.
7
In talking of education how shallow the argument that each class must be educated for the special
work it proposed to do, and all those faculties not needed in this special walk must lie dormant
and utterly wither for want of use, when, perhaps, these will be the very faculties needed in life's
greatest emergies. Some say, Where is the use of drilling serie in the languages, the Sciences, in
law, medicine, theology? As wives, mothers, housekeepers, cooks, they need a different curriculum
from boys who are to fill all positions. The chief cooks in our great hotels and ocean steamers are
men. In large cities men run the bakies; they make our bread, cake and pies. They manage the
laundries; they are now considered our best milliners and dressmakers. Because some men fill these
departments of usefulness, shall we regulate the curriculum in Harvard and Yale to their present
necessities? If not why this talk in our best colleges of a curriculum for girls who are crowding into
the trades and professions; teachers in all our public schools rapidly hiling many lucrative and
honorable positions in life? They are showing too, their calmness and courage in the most trying
hours of human experience.
You have probably all read in the daily papers of the terrible storm in the Bay of Biscay when a
tidal wave such havoc on the shore, wrecking vessels, unroofing houses and carrying destruction
everywhere. Among other buildings the woman's prison was demolished. Those who escaped saw
men struggling to reach the shore. They promptly by clasping hands made a chain of themselves and
pushed out into the sea, again and again, at the risk of their lives until they had brought six men to
shore, carried them to a shelter, and did all in their power for their comfort and protection. Title http://www.loc.gov/resource/rbnawsa.n8358What especial school of training could have prepared these women for this sublime moment of
their lives. In times like this humanity rises above all college curriculums and recognises Nature
as the greatest of all teachers in the hour of danger and death. Women are already the equals of
men in the whole of ream of thought, in art, science, literature, and government. With telescope
vision they explore the starry firmament, and bring back the history of the planetary world. With
chart and compass they pilot ships across the mighty deep, and with skillful finger send electric
messages around the globe. In galleries of art the beauties of nature and the virtues of humanity
are immortalized by them on their canvas and by their inspired touch dull blocks of marble are
transformed into angels of light.
In music they speak again the language of Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, and are
worthy interpreters of their great thoughts. The poetry and novels of the century are theirs, and
they have touched the keynote of reform in religion, politics, and social life. They fill the editor's and
professor's chair, and plead at the bar of justice, walk the 8 wards of the hospital, and speak from
the pulpit and the platform; such is the type of womanhood that an enlightened public sentiment
welcomes today, and such the triumph of the facts of life over the false theories of the past.
Is it, then, consistent to hold the developed woman of this day within the same narrow political limits
as the dame with the spinning wheel and knitting needle occupied in the past? No! no! Machinery
has taken the labors of woman as well as man on its tireless shoulders; the loom and the spinning
wheel are but dreams of the past; the pen, the brush, the easel, the chisel, have taken their places,
while the hopes and ambitions of women are essentially changed.
We see reason sufficient in the outer conditions of human being for individual liberty and
development, but when we consider the self dependence of every human soul we see the need of
courage, judgment, and the exercise of every faculty of mind and body, strengthened and developed
by use, in woman as well as man.
Whatever may be said of man's protecting power in ordinary conditions, mid all the terrible disasters
by land and sea, in the supreme moments of danger, alone, woman must ever meet the horrors of
the situation; the Angel of Death even makes no royal pathway for her. Man's love and sympathy
enter only into the sunshine of our lives. In that solemn solitude of self, that links us with the
immeasurable and the eternal, each soul lives alone forever. A recent writer says:
I remember once, in crossing the Atlantic, to have gone upon the deck of the ship at midnight, when
a dense black cloud enveloped the sky, and the great deep was roaring madly under the lashes of
demoniac winds. My feelings was not of danger or fear (which is a base surrender of the immortal Title http://www.loc.gov/resource/rbnawsa.n8358soul), but of utter desolation and loneliness; a little speck of life shut in by a tremendous darkness.
Again I remember to have climbed the slopes of the Swiss Alps, up beyond the point where
vegetation ceases, and the stunted conifers no longer struggle against the unfeeling blasts. Around
me lay a huge confusion of rocks, out of which the gigantic ice peaks shot into the measureless blue
of the heavens, and again my only feeling was the awful solitude.
And yet, there is a solitude, which each and every one of us has always carried with him, more
inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea; the solitude of
self. Our inner being, which we call ourself, no eye nor touch of man or angel has ever pierced. It is
more hidden than the caves of the gnome; the sacred adytum of the oracle; the hidden chamber of
eleusinian mystery, for to it only omniscience is permitted to enter.
Such is individual life. Who, I ask you, can take, dare take, on himself the rights, the duties, the
responsibilities of another human soul?
