Thesis in Declaration of Sentiments

The adjective “abject” means cast down to the lowest, most spiritless state or condition. In this final grievance, Stanton claims that under men’s control, women lose their own identity and fall into despondency and hopelessness.

The verb “usurped” means to seize illegally; the noun “prerogative” refers to an exclusive right. In the Hebrew bible, the word “Jehovah” is one of the seven names for the God of Israel. This phrase suggests that men have commandeered God’s position by controlling women’s rights. Stanton claims to the contrary that “her conscience” belongs to the true, real God, not to the men who have falsely usurped the authority of God.

Today, this grievance is known as a “double standard,” a term used to describe how one group of people is treated differently than another. More particularly, this term is used to describe how a set of ethical values is more rigorously applied to women than to men.

In 1848, fragments of English common law continued to subsist in American law. One of the major tenets of this antiquated law system was known as “coverture,” a legal doctrine by which a married woman was considered to be under her husband’s protection. A woman’s legal status were “covered”—also called “feme covert” in legal jargon—meaning that her rights and financial independence were subsumed by her husband’s. In William Blackstone’s 1765 Commentaries on the Laws of England, the author describes how the “legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband; under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs everything.” In the 1845 novel Essays on Human Rights and their Political Guaranties, Elisha P. Hurlbut further demonstrates the dehumanizing effects of this law, writing that “in the eye of the law” a married woman “exists not at all.” Like Stanton says here, married women are “civilly dead”; they are placed, as Hurlbut writes, in a “legal tomb.”

The first point of grievance Stanton mentions is that women do not have the ability to vote. Stanton saw suffrage or “elective franchise” as perhaps the most important right women needed in order to gain autonomy in society. Without enfranchisement and the right to vote, women were essentially voiceless in the public sphere. Ironically, on the second day of the convention, when the “Declaration of Sentiments” was adopted, the convention also considered twelve resolutions. Eleven passed unanimously, but the last one—women’s “sacred right to the elective franchise”—aroused much debate because it was so controversial at the time. Eventually when Frederick Douglass joined Stanton’s side, all resolutions passed, including the resolution for enfranchisement.