SOURCE: "Wright, the American Suffragists, Mill, and Whitman," in In Common Cause: The "Conservative" Frances Trollope and the "Radical" Frances Wright, Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993, pp. 94-114.

In the following essay, Kissel contends that Frances Wright, by generating both public opprobrium and sympathy, significantly advanced the cause of women's rights in the United States and Britain.

Rejected by the majority, Frances Wright's ideas nevertheless came to affect every level of American society. Those who have focused attention on her career have agreed on the paradox of her life, its electricity and color reduced to seeming paralysis and invisibility before her death. Yet her ideas would have impact on the mainstream of American culture. In 1924 William Randall Waterman concluded his study of Frances Wright with these words:

Just how deeply she influenced American thought it is difficult to say…. Probably it would be safe to say that...