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\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\u201cIt is the plain duty of every woman to desire the vote, and of every man to remove the obstacles in her way.\u201d
\n–Isabella Beecher Hooker, \u201cThe Constitutional Rights of Women,\u201d 1888<\/p>\n
A Leading Women\u2019s Rights Advocate<\/h5>\n
In 1870, Hartford resident Isabella Beecher Hooker presented a bill to the Connecticut General Assembly. Co-written with her husband, John Hooker, the bill called for establishing property rights for all married women\u2014\u201cmaking husband and wife equal in property rights\u201d (\u201cThe Last of the Beechers\u201d). The bill was rejected. Undeterred, Isabella reintroduced the bill every year for seven years<\/em> \u2013 until 1877, when it was finally passed. Governor Richard D. Hubbard, a family friend, wrote to Isabella, \u201cThank yourself and such as you for what there is of progress in respect to women\u2019s rights among us\u201d (Campbell). Isabella\u2019s activism and persistence impacted thousands of women living in Connecticut.<\/p>\n For much of the latter half of the nineteenth century, Isabella was one of the state\u2019s\u2014and nation\u2019s\u2014leading women\u2019s rights activists, evolving into an ever-more radical voice as she advocated for suffrage, property rights, better access to divorce, and public service. She was also an ardent Spiritualist, joining a movement that believed the living could communicate with the dead. Described by author Susan Campbell as a \u201ccuriously modern nineteenth-century figure,\u201d Isabella used the power of the written word to address inequities and connect communities. Some of her most notable works were written while living in Hartford, and they were strongly influenced by the family, friends, and neighbors who formed her intellectual communities.<\/p>\n Isabella Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut on February 22, 1822 to Harriet Porter Beecher and prominent Calvinist minister Lyman Beecher. She grew up with 11 siblings\u2014about half of them significantly older, Lyman\u2019s children with his first wife, Roxanna. The \u201cFabulous Beechers,\u201d as Lyman and his adult children were known, enjoyed national fame for years, distinguishing themselves as public figures known for ministry, activism, and\/or literary accomplishments, and their progressive support for education, abolition, and women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n As a child, Isabella moved with her family first to Boston and then to Cincinnati. She and her sisters\u2014including older sisters Catharine, a prominent proponent of women\u2019s education and domesticity; and Harriet, who would author the famous anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin<\/em>\u2014studied subjects like Latin, mathematics, and geography at a time when those opportunities were denied to most girls. Isabella\u2019s mother Harriet, who was sick for much of her daughter\u2019s childhood, died from consumption in 1835. Two years later, Isabella moved to Hartford to live with another older sister\u2014Mary Beecher Perkins\u2014and continue her education at Catharine\u2019s new school, the Hartford Female Seminary. Catharine would later describe Isabella as \u201cformed by nature to take the lead,\u201d with \u201cpower to influence others\u201d (Campbell 34). Over the next seven decades, Connecticut was where Isabella would grow as an activist and writer.<\/p>\n In Hartford, Isabella met, and, at age 19, married John Hooker, a lawyer and abolitionist. From the outset, their relationship was a partnership: Isabella was determined not to lose her autonomy and chafed at traditional nineteenth-century expectations for married women\u2019s submissiveness; John supported his wife and was himself an activist for women\u2019s rights. They lived in Farmington for twelve years, where they had four children: Thomas, who died as an infant; Mary; Alice; and Edward.<\/p>\n The family relocated to the west end of Hartford in 1853, moving into a new brick Italianate house on Forest Street, where they, along with the Gillette family, founded the Nook Farm literary and art colony, where intellectual engagement and creativity were community affairs. They would welcome numerous prominent authors to the neighborhood over the years, including Isabella\u2019s sisters Catharine, Mary, and Harriet, as well as Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain) and Charles Dudley Warner. The Hookers\u2019 home still stands, directly across from Hartford High School.<\/p>\n During her early years of marriage and motherhood, Isabella struggled with physical pain, anxiety, and depression that recurred throughout her life. She frequently sought relief through hydrotherapy\u2014the \u201cwater cure\u201d popular in the mid-nineteenth century\u2014and spent extended stays at spas in upstate New York.<\/p>\n At the same time, Isabella was, in her private life, becoming increasingly involved in the abolitionism, women\u2019s rights, and Spiritualism movements that offered unique opportunities for female leadership. In her journals and letters to family members, Isabella was a talented writer who candidly shared her feelings and beliefs. By her own admission, her interest in \u201cthe woman question\u201d grew rapidly after her marriage. She was particularly outraged at the lack of rights afforded married women: that \u201cthe very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband under whose wings, protection and cover, she performs everything\u201d (\u201cThe Last of the Beechers\u201d).<\/p>\n Isabella\u2019s beliefs about women\u2019s rights were shaped by her relationships with numerous influential thinkers and activists: her sister Catharine Beecher, a proponent for women\u2019s education who, to Isabella\u2019s chagrin, did not believe women should get the vote; her brother Henry Ward Beecher, who was one of the most famous ministers in the country, known for his support of abolition and women\u2019s suffrage; her husband John, with his strong moral compass, legal mind, and unwavering belief in his wife\u2019s brilliance; and some of the most influential leaders of the nation\u2019s women\u2019s rights movement: Anna Dickinson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Victoria Woodhull.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t until the late 1860s, however, that Isabella turned her energies to the public stage. She co-founded the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association in 1869. One of her earliest published pieces, \u201cA Mother\u2019s Letters to a Daughter on Women\u2019s Suffrage\u201d (1868), demonstrates her earlier, more conservative approach to advocating for women\u2019s right to vote, insisting on motherhood as a woman\u2019s ultimate purpose. Her writing and speeches became increasingly radical over the decades\u2014reflecting in part the influence of close friend Victoria Woodhull. Famously\u2014or perhaps infamously\u2014Isabella remained so committed to the cause of women\u2019s rights that she spoke out against<\/em> her brother Henry Ward Beecher when he was accused (by Woodhull) of marital infidelity in a public scandal. Though many of her siblings pleaded with her to support her brother, and some, including Harriet, became estranged from her, Isabella insisted on the importance of advocating for women.<\/p>\n Isabella\u2019s intense personality and willingness to publicly espouse radical viewpoints such as suffrage and Spiritualism, contradicting sharply from established norms of \u201cproper\u201d behavior for women, led some\u2014including members of her own family\u2014to question her sanity. Though we cannot know for sure her mental state, calling a woman insane was an established strategy to discredit outspoken women (see, for reference, \u201cThe Yellow Wallpaper,\u201d written by Isabella\u2019s grandniece, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who was born in Nook Farm in 1860).<\/p>\n In 1888, Isabella took one of the largest stages of her life. As an organizer for the March 23, 1888 International Convention of Women, she wrote and delivered a speech that performs a compelling close reading of the U.S. Constitution, arguing that it does NOT, in fact, deny women the vote, and therefore women should claim their right to do so. Women, she insists, \u201cdo not mean any longer to submit patiently and quietly to such injustice\u201d:<\/p>\n [I]t makes my blood boil to hear \u2026 from the lips of mere boys the assertion that they and their sex alone have the right to make and execute the laws that I and my daughters are to live under; that they are born to rule, and I born to obey \u2026 moral corruption will not only continue to prevail, but with an advancing civilization will be steadily on the increase so long as woman is powerless to put down moral evils by the direct use of political power as well as by moral influence. (\u201cThe Constitutional Rights of Women\u201d)<\/p>\n This speech solidified Isabella\u2019s influence as an intellectual powerhouse in the suffragist movement\u2014a leader whose compelling advocacy would ultimately allow her to shake earlier controversies and accusations of radicalism.<\/p>\n In 1905, reflecting on her legacy, Isabella published an autobiographical article in Connecticut Magazine<\/em> titled \u201cThe Last of the Beechers: Memories on my Eighty-Third Birthday.\u201d She modestly recounts a life marked by impactful activism and intellectual celebrity. Even in the article, though\u2014amidst a clear sense of achievement\u2014Isabella remains focused on the cause: \u201cMy lover husband has passed to the Great Beyond, and now I am myself awaiting the beckoning call to join him with glad heart, save for my continued disfranchisement.\u201d<\/p>\n Isabella died in Hartford on January 25, 1907 at age 84, after suffering a stroke days earlier. \u201cMrs. Hooker,\u201d wrote Francis Trevelyan Miller, the editor of The Connecticut<\/em> and son of suffragist Jane A. Hull, \u201chas never been a mere spectator of progress, or a plagiarist of yesterday; she has herself been an integral part of evolution. With the achievements of the last century she has in all things kept pace and at many times led the way\u201d (\u201cAn Appreciation\u201d 303).<\/p>\n \u201cThe Constitutional Rights of the Women of the United States: An Address Before the International Council of Women,\u201d<\/a> Washington D. C., March 30, 1888.<\/p>\n “Shall Women Vote? A Matrimonial Dialogue”<\/a>\u00a0(1860)<\/p>\n \u201cA Mother\u2019s Letters to a Daughter on Women\u2019s Suffrage\u201d (1868)<\/p>\n “The Last of the Beechers: Memories on my Eighty-Third Birthday,”<\/a> Connecticut Magazine, 1905.<\/p>\n Isabella Beecher Hooker – Biographical and Critical Sources<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fighting for the Constitutional Rights of Women Written by Katie Burton \u201cIt is the plain duty of every woman to desire the vote, and of every man to remove the obstacles in her way.\u201d –Isabella Beecher Hooker, \u201cThe Constitutional Rights of Women,\u201d 1888 A Leading Women\u2019s Rights Advocate In 1870, Hartford resident Isabella Beecher Hooker … Continue reading Isabella Beecher Hooker (1822-1907)<\/span> Growing Up Beecher<\/h5>\n
Life in Hartford<\/h5>\n
Rising Activism<\/h5>\n
On the Constitutional Rights of Women<\/h5>\n
Isabella’s Legacy<\/h5>\n
Anthology Selections<\/h4>\n