Judith Murray and Margaret Fuller are two women’s rights activists. They wrote essays on feminism many years apart, but shared identical opinions in their works “On the Equality of the Sexes” and “Women in the Nineteenth Century”. Many of their ideas revolved around women’s supposed inferiority. Women were expected to be passive, domesticated and uneducated. They were not given the same education, training or freedom that men were therefore, it was difficult to refute the stereotypes given to them.
Eventually, some women began to acknowledge those gender imbalances. In part to women’s rights activists, like Murray and Fuller, the idea of gender egalitarianism became more realistic. Gender egalitarianism is the belief that men and women are…show more content… However, Murray, a feminist as well as a transcendentalist, focuses more on the individual’s role in society. She believes that allowing women a greater amount of freedom will be beneficial to advancements in all areas of life. This idea is just a more developed idea of Murray’s belief that allowing women to be educated would be beneficial for both parties.
In addition, through reading both of the essays, it is apparent how women’s freedom of speech has evolved over time. Murray is more reserved in her essay; largely due to the fact, women’s intelligence was not necessarily acceptable. During her time women’s writings had to be thoroughly examined in order to be published. With that being said, Murray had to make sure she did not offend her reader but still got as much of point across as possible. Fuller, writing a little over half a century later, was able to write more freely due to the advancement of women’s…show more content… Women are still not treated nearly as well as men. They are still confined to the walls of the household, still given limited rights and as Fuller stated, “owned” by their men. Fuller even compares the treatment of women in the nineteenth to the treatment of slaves. By comparing slavery and women’s rights, Fuller is effective in making others consider the severity of how women were treated. Many people began to realize how horrible they were treating not only the slaves but their wives as well. The fact that an idea such as this was even able to be published is exemplary of how women’s rights were slowly beginning to evolve.
Since women’s freedom of speech had advanced by the time Fuller wrote her essay, she was able to display her intelligence slightly more than Murray was. Fuller wrote numerous essays and commentaries on the treatment of African Americans, Native Americans, the poor and mentally ill. These writings touched the hearts of many and captivated the audience because they were categories not regularly written about. Women in Murrays time were either uneducated on these topics or little could be published because they did not want their writings to emphasize on women’s true