The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions is a political text. This text was presented in the first women's rights convention of the United States, held in Seneca Falls (New York) in 1848. During this convention, seventy women and thirty men gathered to discuss about the conditions of the rights of women in social, civil and religious life. At that time, the country was enjoying a period in which only free men (white, non-slaves) had the right to vote. In consequence, slaves, women and children were not included in the group of voters because they had no political voice. In order to change that, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, to show the way women were treated in the country.
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But this is a text written to change the situation of the women through the whole country. So, it was aimed to reach the men, especially those who had written the laws, as well as, American women, to convince them to fight for their rights. This text is divided in two parts: The Sentiments and the Resolutions. The Declaration of Sentiments gathers the situation of women and their deprivation of legal rights. This part starts with the idea that women and men had been created as equals by God, no matter their sex or race. Therefore, all human beings have some rights for granted by nature, but in that society, women suffered an inferiority, and this text is made to expose it. Stanton declared that the situation of women had to change because “she had no voice” and she was “civilly dead”. In this part of the declaration, she starts almost every paragraph with the word 'he', making reference to all the men that oppressed women, making women to be totally dependent of men, specially of their husbands. The word 'he' has here a clear negative connotation, because after it, Stanton enumerates all the injustices that men did to women along the history. Some of these are to monopolize “nearly all the profitable employments” and the non-subordinate position to the church, or “denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough
But this is a text written to change the situation of the women through the whole country. So, it was aimed to reach the men, especially those who had written the laws, as well as, American women, to convince them to fight for their rights. This text is divided in two parts: The Sentiments and the Resolutions. The Declaration of Sentiments gathers the situation of women and their deprivation of legal rights. This part starts with the idea that women and men had been created as equals by God, no matter their sex or race. Therefore, all human beings have some rights for granted by nature, but in that society, women suffered an inferiority, and this text is made to expose it. Stanton declared that the situation of women had to change because “she had no voice” and she was “civilly dead”. In this part of the declaration, she starts almost every paragraph with the word 'he', making reference to all the men that oppressed women, making women to be totally dependent of men, specially of their husbands. The word 'he' has here a clear negative connotation, because after it, Stanton enumerates all the injustices that men did to women along the history. Some of these are to monopolize “nearly all the profitable employments” and the non-subordinate position to the church, or “denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough