ABSTRACT
Repetition and parallelism are much used; the structure is associative; the evidence is the evocation of personal experiences. Consistent with other lyrical elements, Stanton's relationship to the audience is a kind of indirect address. The interrelationship between form and substance in rhetoric is illustrated in this speech by the ways in which the qualities of lyric form, particularly its emphasis on the subjective and sensual, come to modify Stanton's tragic perspective. Stanton's tragic perspective is modified by an existential emphasis on the individual and an absurdist recognition of the limits of social change. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton addressed male legislators and her brothers and sisters in the National American Woman Suffrage Association, she reminded them of the common philosophical precepts which are alike the foundations of Protestantism, republicanism, and feminism-the principles of humanism. Stanton's speech enables us to understand why, by its nature and from its inception, feminism is grounded in humanism.
