The Solitude of Self

“Brings alive . . . Elizabeth Cady Stanton['s] brilliance . . . and prescient understanding of the centrality of the 'woman question' to American democracy.” —Christine Stansell, author of American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century

Elizabeth Cady Stanton—along with her comrade-in-arms, Susan B. Anthony—was one of the most important leaders of the movement to gain American women the vote. But, as Vivian Gornick argues in this passionate, vivid biographical essay, Stanton is also the greatest feminist thinker of the nineteenth century. Endowed with a philosophical cast of mind large enough to grasp the immensity that women's rights addressed, Stanton developed a devotion to equality uniquely American in character. Her writing and life make clear why feminism as a liberation movement has flourished here as nowhere else in the world.

In her last public address, “The Solitude of Self,” (delivered in 1892), Stanton argued for women's political equality on the grounds that loneliness is the human condition, and that each citizen therefore needs the tools to fight alone for his or her interests.

Vivian Gornick first encountered “The Solitude of Self” thirty years ago and this book is a profound, distilled meditation on what makes American feminism American from one of the finest critics of our time.

“Leading us into the thinking of this great feminist, Gornick offers a way to embrace the solitude that is, for every thinking human being, the fiercest attachment of all.” —Honor Moore, author of The White Blackbird

“A powerful meditation that is all at once informative and moving.” —Martin Duberman, author of Paul Robeson: A Biography