Female Influence Is Powerful
Female Influence Is Powerful
Respectability, Responsibility, and Setting the Terms of the Woman Question Debate
This chapter presents Maria Stewart as the embodiment of the woman question. It situates the challenges encountered by this woman of exceptional talents as characteristic of a broader debate over the proper uses of female influence. This debate was central to the character of abolitionism's political culture—generating divisions among antislavery activists. Female influence, with its emphasis on women's supremacy in the domestic sphere, was the rubric that most black activists used to frame the relationship of women to public culture. However, its parameters expanded as African Americans sought to address the material challenges their communities faced. Maria Stewart may have stepped too far beyond the parameters of female influence for many black Bostonians, but the questions she posed lingered.
Keywords: woman question, Maria Stewart, female influence, abolitionism, antislavery activists, women's supremacy, black activists
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