Susan B. Anthony was a pioneering feminist who fought for the rights of women, including the right to vote and to divorce. She helped secure of the rights that women now take for granted, though marches, demonstrations and giving countless speeches throughout the United States and Europe. Although she died before women were given the right to vote, Susan B. Anthony was instrumental in obtaining vote for women who came after her. Susan B. Anthony also held very liberal views about love, marriage and divorce whch scandalized late 19th century society which was still very much Victorian in its attitudes.
Here is a famous quote by Susan B. Anthony about divorce, which suggests her views about marriage and its inequalities in 19th century America.
Suffraggettes Marching for the Right to Vote
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I think the girl who is able to earn her own living and pay her own way should be as happy as anybody on earth. The sense of independence and security is very sweet.
Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.
Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel - the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.
The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball - the further I am rolled, the more I gain.
Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.
Trust me that as I ignore all law to help the slave, so will I ignore it all to protect an enslaved woman.
One-half of the people of this nation to-day are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write there a new and a just one.
I do not consider divorce an evil by any means. It is just as much a refuge for women married to brutal men as Canada was to the slaves of brutal masters. -- Susan B. Anthony
I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand.
I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.
