What “secret” am I talking about here? Lucretia Mott with a secret?

A good question to ponder on her 227th birthday: First Month (January) 3, 1793.

For her devotees, Lucretia Mott’s life is, or should be, an open book: born into a loving, encouraging family, married for 57 years to what one biographer called “the best husband ever”; she had a long public career of preaching and speaking, of which generous samplings have been preserved; for decades she was a tireless organizer for many reform causes (including –very timely today, an end to war) ; and she left hundreds of letters, which scholars have combed through.

She also endured sorrows: the loss of two of her six children, five terrible years of civil war, and then widowhood; and she overcame decades of withering criticism of her ideas and “heresies.”

None of that is new, or unexamined. But what is less clear, essentially a “secret,” is the answer to a nagging question : how did she get away with it?

One clue: in her personal carriage she was a model of traditional Quaker propriety: she disdained novels as frivolous and vain; it was husband James who sat in a quiet corner, burning the midnight oil, unable to put down Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Then, while Hicksites all around were shedding the grey and the bonnet, she was plain til the very end. Continue reading Lucretia Mott’s Birthday Secret: No Woman Is an Island? →