A Vote of One’s Own

This book presents a life unlike those of most advocates of women’s rights. Caroline Severance did not focus on a cause requiring primarily militant organization. Rather, she saw women’s first need as new opportunities to discover interests and potentials within themselves. In proposing and co-launching the New England Woman’s Club, Severance and her colleagues provided both a retreat from domestic pressures and a means of worldwide outreach. This club and its partner groups revived isolated minds, built organizing skills for business and politics, and introduced the leaders of the day to women as a constituency. The foundation of women’s rights, as Severance saw it, was helping women to cultivate self-awareness, latent individual abilities, and self-knowledge. That foundation, she thought, represented the most direct and durable route to corporate organization and sociopolitical influence. These ordered visions, to which Severance signally contributed, amplified the national conversation about women’s rights.