Why is Susan B. Anthony better known than Elizabeth Cady Stanton?
Anthony’s popularity and renown surpassed Stanton’s in the 1890s, and to this day she remains the better known of the two women. There are a number of explanations for why this happened. Anthony traveled back and forth across the country right up until her death at age 86; more Americans met her, and the younger suffragists, who carried the movement into the 20th century, came to know her. Anthony’s intensity and self-sacrifice for the cause defined her as a kind of patron saint or cult figure for the later woman suffrage movement. In addition, Anthony’s decisions late in her life to concentrate all of her force on winning suffrage simplified the way she was known to the public. By contrast, Stanton in the late decades of her life influenced the movement through writing rather than speaking in person; she took up many reforms, some of which were highly controversial; and she never cultivated or conveyed the impression that she lived for the suffrage movement.
