In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development

Gilligan begins Chapter 5 with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, where Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton presented the Declaration of Sentiments, based on the Declaration of Independence. Mott and Stanton insisted that women are entitled to the same inalienable rights as men. The catalyst for the Seneca Falls Convention was the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention, from which women were excluded.

Women’s insistence on their rights, however, was often perceived as in tension with their “virtue.” Taking a cue from Mary Wollstonecraft’s insistence in A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mott and Stanton insisted that self-sacrifice prevents self-development. This tension between self-sacrifice and self-development—or perceived “virtue” and rights—continues for Gilligan into contemporary discussions of the Equal Rights Amendment and the larger issue of how women think about rights in relation to moral responsibility.

Gilligan examines two novels, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860) and Margaret Drabble’s The Waterfall (1969), which she contextualizes as spanning a century of movement for women’s rights. In both, a woman is torn between her desire and responsibility. Though Drabble’s revision of The Mill on the Floss begins with the character following her passion, the tension between passion and duty nonetheless remains, so that the “moral problem remains” (131).