First Wave Feminism
Overview
First-wave feminism was a period of groundwork in the ‘western’ world, marked by
women’s advocacy for their own political and philosophical equality.
The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 is widely considered the formal ‘start date’
for the first wave of feminism, though the work and conversations of women in
the earlier decades of the 19th century formed the basis for such a convention
to be held. One of the earliest formal feminist propositions was A Vindication
of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft, published in 1792– nearly 50
years prior to the formal beginning of the first wave.
Sarah Grimke wrote her
Letters on the Equality of the Sexes in 1837, during the buildup to widespread organized
women’s rights movements. Arguably, the thoughts discussed directly before
history’s most influential events can illuminate the zeitgeist just as well as,
if not better than, the propaganda formed after a meeting of the minds. Grimke
was a prominent abolitionist as well as a feminist, and argued in favor of
complete equality in social standing regardless of sex (though her depiction of
the sexes was particularly binary, and based in her Quaker faith). Despite her
and many others first-wave feminists’ stances as abolitionists, the movement as
a whole is criticized for centering around the rights of white, western women
in particular. Letters gives insight into the arguments made by white, Christian,
abolitionist-feminists about both women as a whole, and women in particular parts of the world. A selection of letters were sourced from Grimke’s collection, in an
attempt to abbreviate her points.