ABSTRACT
Of all people to preserve the revolutionary spirit of the early women’s rights movement in America, Lucretia Mott, a devout Quaker pacifist and humanist, would seem to be the least likely candidate. Mott is widely recognized as a moral and spiritual ‘foremother’ among abolitionists and early women’s rights advocates, but the truly radical nature of her thought is underappreciated. A vital part of Mott’s radicalism is her lifelong commitment to and defense of Mary Wollstonecraft in spite of her controversial life and work. Mott’s invocations of Wollstonecraft serve several purposes. They represent a kind of badge of honor for Mott’s own radicalism. As an extension of her progressive faith, Mott fought for women’s rights and abolitionism throughout her lifetime. Mott sought to include Wollstonecraft in the emerging popular narrative of the early women’s rights movement because she wanted to preserve the revolutionary nature of the cause. By including marginalized contributors such as Wollstonecraft, Mott acknowledges the diverse origins and complex development of the struggle for women’s rights. Influenced by freethinkers such as Wollstonecraft and by her progressive Quaker faith, Mott herself makes an important yet neglected theoretical contribution to the struggle for women’s rights by advocating a radically egalitarian and democratic understanding of political power and a highly participatory view of citizenship.
