Sa(l)vaging The woman's bible : reading interpretive communities across contexts

This thesis argues that the Womans Bible, over its 100+ year lifetime, became a pliable cultural symbol, exploited by various interpretive communities to serve their argumentative ends. The Womans Bible was compiled and published by American woman suffragist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in the 1890s, but was promptly denounced by her suffrage colleagues. In the decades that followed, the Womans Bible was put to argumentative use by anti-suffragists, who used it to demonstrate the radicalism of the woman suffrage movement. The book was not re-published until the 1970s, when it became a symbol of Christian feminist liberation. In each of these cases, the book was read according to the terministic screens and structures of relevancy unique to each interpretive community Reading the Womans Bible across its contexts of reception allows for insight into the intersections between two social movements: feminism and Christianity.