Letters on the Equality of the Sexes
And the Condition of Woman
These letters examine women's unequal treatment in law, education, religion, and everyday life. Grimké rereads the biblical story of Adam and Eve to challenge claims that women should obey men.
120 pages 2h 20m reading time
- One of the first full arguments for women's rights written by an American woman.
- Argues that men and women were created as moral equals, so whatever is right for a man to do is right for a woman to do.
- Compares the legal position of married women to that of enslaved people, showing how the law took away a wife's property, earnings, and separate identity.
- Shaped the thinking of the early American women's rights movement, which held its first convention at Seneca Falls in 1848.
- Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton both admired the letters, and its line asking men to "take their feet from off our necks" is still widely quoted.
Answered angry ministers
Massachusetts church leaders had issued a letter condemning women who spoke in public, and Grimké wrote back.
Written on the road
She wrote the letters in 1837 while touring Massachusetts with her sister, speaking against slavery to crowds.
Addressed to a friend
Each letter was written to Mary Parker, who led the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society.
Printed first in a newspaper
The letters appeared one by one in a Boston paper, the New England Spectator, before becoming a book.
Forgotten, then rediscovered
The book faded from view for over a century until women's history scholars brought it back in the 1970s.