Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage

Harriot Stanton Blatch (1856-1940), daughter of the famous suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, played an essential role in the winning of woman suffrage in the United States. This powerfully written book is both a biography of Harriot Blatch and a new appraisal of the winning and aftermath of the American woman suffrage movement. Harriot Blatchs dedication to the realization of woman suffrage, marked by a concern for social justice and human liberty, closely paralleled that of her mother. However, says Ellen DuBois, Blatch was also very much her own woman. For almost two decades, she put an oceans distance between her mother and herself, marrying an Englishman, raising a daughter in England, and absorbing the new political currents of Fabian socialism that helped her see the possibilities of a modern womens rights movement. After her mothers death in 1902, Blatch returned to the United States. There she expanded suffragisms class basis, encouraged a more lively activist style, and brought a genuine political sensibility to the movement. And though she devoted herself to enfranchisement, she also envisioned feminism going further to encompass economic power and independence for women as well. DuBois tells the story of Blatchs life and work, in the process reinterpreting the history and politics of the American suffrage movement and the consequences for womens freedom.