Sidonie Smith (Essay Date 1992)

SOURCE: Smith, Sidonie. "Resisting the Gaze of Embodiment: Women's Autobiography in the Nineteenth Century." In American Women's Autobiography: Fea(s)ts of Memory, edited by Margo Culley, pp. 75-110. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992.

In the following excerpt, Smith explores Stanton's expression of her selfhood in her autobiography.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton announces in the preface to Eighty Years and More, 1815-1897 that the story of her life is actually split, doubly inscribed: "The story of my private life as the wife of an earnest reformer, as an enthusiastic housekeeper, proud of my skill in every department of domestic economy, and as the mother of seven children, may amuse and benefit the reader. The incidents of my public career as a leader in the most momentous reform yet launched upon the world—the emancipation of woman—will be found in The History of...