Eighty Years and More

Estelle C. Jelinek (Essay Date 1980)

SOURCE: Jelinek, Estelle C. "The Paradox and Success of Elizabeth Cady Stanton." In Women's Autobiography: Essays in Criticism, edited by Estelle C. Jelinek, pp. 71-92. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.

In the following essay, Jelinek discusses the paradoxical self-image of an ordinary woman and an extraordinary public figure that Stanton presents in Eighty Years and More, noting that Stanton was a success in both roles in her life.

In 1895, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton began her autobiography at the age of eighty, she was still a vigorous and active person, writing and publishing even during the last year of her life. Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences, 1815-1897 (1898) followed close on the heels of two other of her major publications, History of Woman Suffrage (I-II, 1881-86) and The Woman's Bible (I, 1895; II, 1898), and she had been a prolific writer of...