In Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman (1838), Grimke defended the right of women to speak in public in defense of a moral cause. Sarah Moore Grimke was born on November 26, 1792, in Charleston, South Carolina.
When Sarah was 26, Judge Grimké traveled to Philadelphia and then to the Atlantic seashore to try to recover his health. Sarah accompanied him on this trip and cared for her father.
However, Grimké and her sister would not let that stop her from making a difference for women and African Americans. Born on November 26, 1792, Sarah Grimké came from a rich family of slave holders in Charleston, South Carolina.
“Slavery was a millstone about my neck, and marred my comfort from the time I can remember myself.” Abolitionist and feminist Sarah Moore Grimké and her sister Angelina were the first women to testify before a state legislature on the issue of rights for Black people. Who Was Sarah Moore Grimké?
Book Review: 'The Invention of Wings,' By Sue Monk Kidd Sue Monk Kidd's new novel, The Invention of Wings, is a fictionalized account of the abolitionist sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké, and the slave Hetty, given to Sarah on her 11th birthday.
Sarah. Sarah writes to Nina, explaining how she refused Israel's proposal. Sarah no longer wants to be Nina's mother or example, she just wants to be her sister. Nina writes back that she has also broken off her engagement, fed up with Rev.
She is mentally a slave, while Handful is literally a slave. What does Handful learn from her mother's theft of the green silk? Handful learns to not apologize for misbehaving, but to apologize for getting caught.
Spirit Tree: In The Invention of Wings, the spirit tree is a symbol of safety and comfort for Handful and Charlotte. It's very personal to them, and no one else knows about it. The spirit tree connects them, even when Charlotte disappears toward the middle of the novel.
Though the tale is fictional, the Grimké sisters were real-life abolitionists whose stories captivated Kidd. Also drawn from real life is Hetty, nicknamed Handful.
Once in a private resort on the New Jersey shore, Sarah's father admits both that he does not plan to get better and that he truly agrees with Sarah about the evil of slavery. He dies in the North and Sarah writes home to say that she will not be returning immediately.
Charlotte dies before she reaches freedom, but leaves Handful with the drive and money to allow Handful to go North with Sky.
Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Films has acquired film rights to the novel The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd. An Oprah's Book Club 2.0 selection, The Invention of Wings follows a fictionalized story of real-life 19th century abolitionist sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimke.
The Invention of Wings opens in 1803, on Sarah Grimké's 11th birthday. To mark the occasion, her mother gives her an unwanted birthday gift: the awkwardly beribboned 10-year-old Hetty Grimké--Sarah's very own slave.
Handful first steals red thread from Sarah as a young girl, in a small rebellion against the many limits on her life as a slave. From then on, red thread becomes the symbol of the revolutionary spirit of the slaves.
Catherine primly objects to Sarah's presence in Israel's house, but warms to Sarah once she sees that Sarah is genuine in her faith. Israel Morris' first wife, the epitome of the good Quaker woman who dedicates her life to good works and caring for her children.
Friendship. The central focus of the novel is the friendship between Sarah and Handful, despite the different worlds these two women come from.
The The Invention of Wings quotes below are all either spoken by Sarah Grimké or refer to Sarah Grimké. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one: ).
The timeline below shows where the character Sarah Grimké appears in The Invention of Wings. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Grimké and her sister gradually distinguished themselves from other abolitionist speakers by daring to debate with men, thereby doing away with former gender restrictions . Unlike her more outspoken and radical sister, Grimké was not considered a dynamic public speaker.
Becoming a Quaker. Frustrated by her surroundings, Grimké frequently found reprieve in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During one of her visits there, she met with members of the Quakers' Society of Friends.
The main catalyst for Grimké's activism in the abolitionist movement was her sister's letter to William Lloyd Garrison, which was published in The Liberator, his abolitionist newspaper. Because Grimké was the shier of the two, she tended to let Angelina take the lead. Still, it was both of them who, as a result ...
In 1837 , Grimké and her sister made a prominent appearance at the Anti-Slavery Convention in New York. After the convention, they launched a public speaking tour in New England, during which they continued to express their abolitionist sentiment.
Finding their views on slavery and women's rights to be very much in line in with her own, Grimké decided to join them. In 1829, she moved to Philadelphia for good. Nine years later, her sister, Angelina, joined her there, and the two became actively involved in the Society of Friends.
Abolitionist and feminist Sarah Moore Grimké and her sister Angelina were the first women to testify before a state legislature on the issue of rights for Black people.
(Angelina died just a few years after her sister, on Oct. 26, 1879.) Sarah Grimké's longest epistle, "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women ," had a profound effect on the women's rights movement because it is considered the first developed public argument for women's equality in the U.S.
In Philadelphia on her own, Sarah encountered Quakers—members of the Society of Friends. She read books by the Quaker leader John Woolman and considered joining this group that opposed enslavement and included women in leadership roles, but first she wanted to return home.
By 1829, Angelina had given up on converting others in the South to the antislavery cause, so she joined Sarah in Philadelphia.
Following these changes in their lives, Sarah and Angelina got involved with the abolitionist movement, which moved beyond the American Colonization Society. The sisters joined the American Anti-Slavery Society soon after its 1830 founding. They also became active in an organization working to boycott food produced with the stolen labor of enslaved people.
The publication of those two works led to many invitations to speak. Sarah and Angelina toured for 23 weeks in 1837, using their own money and visiting 67 cities. Sarah was to speak to the Massachusetts Legislature on abolition; she became ill and Angelina spoke for her.
By 1868, Sarah, Angelina, and Theodore were all serving as officers of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. On March 7, 1870, the sisters deliberately flouted the suffrage laws by voting along with 42 others.
Inspired by the criticism of women speaking publicly which was directed against the sisters, Sarah came out for women's rights. She published "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women.".
But it was too late – Judge Grimke died in Bordentown, New Jersey, with Sarah by his side.
When her brother Thomas went off to law school at Yale, Sarah remained at home, feeling that she was alone in her questioning the treatment of women, particularly in respect to education, and the institution of slavery.
The Philadelphia Society of Friends officially expelled both sisters – Angelina for marrying a non-Quaker and Sarah for attending the wedding . The newlyweds and Sarah moved to a farm in Belleville, New Jersey. Theodore Weld had been a severe critic of Sarah’s inclusion of women’s rights into the abolitionist movement.
Philadelphia and the Quakers. In 1818, as Sarah turned twenty-six and Angelina entered her teens, their father was deathly ill. Sarah was sent alone to accompany her father to Philadelphia in search of a cure, but his condition grew worse.
In the summer of 1837 Sarah and Angelina began a twenty-three week lecture tour in support of the abolitionist movement, unheard of for women of the time. Financing the trip themselves, the sisters visited sixty-seven cities, breaking new ground for women as public speakers.
Still, Sarah secretly taught her personal slave to read and write, but when her parents discovered the young tutor at work, the vehemence of her father’s response was alarming. He was furious and nearly had the young slave girl whipped.
When Sarah returned to South Carolina for a visit in the spring of 1827 , Angelina was impressed by the simplicity of her sister’s Quaker dress and lifestyle. When Sarah returned to Philadelphia, Angelina went with her and stayed from July to November of that year, returning home committed to the Quaker faith.
That wouldn’t have been remarkable, except that the speech was more than 175 years old. Dramatized in a 2013 video, the speech was delivered to the Massachusetts Legislature in 1838 by anti-slavery advocate Angelina Grimké.
The rule-breaking Sisters Grimke. Before her lecture on the Grimké sisters, historian Louise W. Knight (left) talks about the new petitions database with Daniel Carpenter, Harvard’s Allie S. Freed Professor of Government. Photo (1) by Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer; (2) Courtesy of the Schlesinger Library on the History ...
In those days, the Grimké sisters — Angelina and Sarah — were famous for breaking rules. As anti-slavery advocates canvassing for the cause, they addressed large mixed-gender audiences in public venues, a reversal of custom.
That fervor in 1836 was inspired, in part, by a gag rule on anti-slavery petitions passed by the 25th Congress the year before under pressure from pro-slavery Southern Democrats.
A recent study, co-authored by Harvard’s Allie S. Freed Professor of Government Daniel Carpenter, backed up the notion that antebellum petitioning comprised a landmark moment in which women learned lessons of political organization later applied to the suffragette movement.
One 1855 petition, from four men in Tisbury, Mass., petitioned that woman be given the right to vote and hold office — to “authorize women, on terms of quality with men, to exercise all the rights of citizens.”. Their plea, of course, went nowhere. It was filed away until Topich uncovered it.