Free In Her Own Right : The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton by Elisabeth Griffith Page A

biographers.
    Social learning theory results in many insights into character development and motivation, but there are some aspects of personality it does not explain. One is curious to know more about Stanton’s sexual attitudes and her pervasive interest in religion. Control over decisions affecting pregnancy and the frequency of intercourse were essential aspects of Stanton’s definition of female independence, but the record does not reveal much about how she dealt with these issues. Similarly, freedom from traditional church teachings about woman’s place was another step toward self-sovereignty. Achieving independence in both of these areas represented for Stanton steps toward her idealized self-definition.
    Nor does social learning theory provide an explanation for periods of depression in Stanton’s life, although her manner of dealing with them—by cleaning house or taking action—was a learned response. Stanton’s depressions follow deaths, child-births, separation, and conversion, and do not seem abnormal. Nor does the theory answer other questions: why Stanton treated Anthony so shabbily in the 1870s; why she cared about remaining paired with Henry and Susan; why she took risks over Train or the Fifteenth Amendment or
The Woman’s Bible
; why she got so fat.
    But the overall conclusions gleaned from social learning theory fit Stanton’s life neatly and are reinforced by the findings of other theories. For example, an application of Erik Erikson’s developmental approach might locate the source of Stanton’s self-confidence and lack of status anxiety in her secure childhood. Studies on the “psychology of commitment,” suggesting that having to endure criticism forone’s beliefs for a long period of time serves to reinforce one’s allegiance, would confirm Stanton’s perseverance. New studies of the motivations of modern women repeat the importance of the parental and female role models found in Stanton’s life.
    The application of other theories can only increase our understanding of this multidimensional woman. For example, although the records are scanty, Freudians might be able to probe questions about Stanton’s relationship with her parents, her bonding with Henry and Anthony, her identification with male mentors, sexual attitudes, and obesity. Indeed, the tension Stanton personally experienced in trying to balance public and private roles, or male and female spheres, foreshadows the difficulty of contemporary women in balancing their needs for “affiliation and achievement.” 8
    Elizabeth Cady Stanton would have been intrigued by this psychological approach. She recognized the significance of individual psychology on development. She understood that women suffered mental as well as physical bondage. One reason she makes such an appealing subject of biography is that many of the issues she addressed and the opinions she expressed have contemporary vitality. In an era of unusual orthodoxies, she was open to new ideas. She believed in family traits and prenatal influences. She thought she had inherited her father’s intelligence and ability to nap, and she attributed her political instincts and her fear of cats to events her mother had experienced while pregnant. 9 She also endorsed phrenology, the nineteenth-century “science of the mind.”
    Even before psychology developed as a discipline in the late nineteenth century, there had been interest in how the mind influenced behavior. As early as the 1840s America was enamored with the theories of Johann Kaspar Spurzheim, * a German immigrant who introduced phrenology and became a teacher of brain anatomy at Harvard Medical School. According to Spurzheim, the faculties of the mind had specific locations in the folds and fissures of the brain and could be measured on the outside by “bump-reading.” A corollary of Spurzheim’s theory was especially attractive to Jacksonian-era Americans: if one could have his faculties identified, one might