"The Status of Woman, Past, Present, and Future."
Susan B. Anthony
Inscribed essay
from The Arena, 1897
Anthony, Susan B. “The Status of Woman, Past, Present, and Future.” [originally printed in The Arena. May 1897. p. 901-908].
2 pp.; bifolium, printing on all sides; paginated; four pinholes at center fold; four ½-inch closed tears at base.
A pamphlet reprinting Anthony’s article, “The Status of Woman Past, Present, and Future,” from the May 1897 issue of The Arena. Inscribed by Anthony at top, With Compliments of the Season/Susan B. Anthony, Dec. 25/97, Rochester, N.Y.
Anthony writes as a “request from The Arena to state what really has come of our half-century of agitation, and what is sure to come in the near future.”
As homage to the approaching 50-year anniversary of the first Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, Anthony outlines the progress of the women’s movement, highlighting the evolution woman has made from solely a “helpless, dependent, [and] fettered,” homemaker, living to serve her husband with few opportunities for employment, to the present (1897) day. Anthony writes, “There is not space to follow the history of the last fifty years and study the methods by which these victories have been gained, but there is not one foot of advanced ground upon which women stand to-day that has not been obtained through the hard-fought battles of other women. The close of this nineteenth century finds every trade, vocation, and profession open to women, and every opportunity at their command for preparing themselves to follow these occupations.” Anthony highlights the specific areas in which progress has been made for women, touching on education, self-sufficiency, legal status, and careers.
Anthony concludes her piece by discussing the specific legislature in the works to pass all leading up to a national amendment for woman’s enfranchisement. Anthony concludes, “Until woman has obtained “that right protective of all other rights – the ballot,” this agitation must still go on, absorbing the time and the energy of our best and strongest women…Then, and not until then, will there be the perfect comradeship, the ideal union between the sexes, that shall result in the highest development of the race. What this shall be we may not attempt to define, but this we know, that only good can come to the individual or to the nation through the rendering of exact justice.”
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