Caroline Dall, Lost Prophet? Engaging Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s The Woman’s Bible” and Caroline Dall’s The College, the Market, and the Court

Caroline Wells Healey Dall (1822-1912) did not play well with others—so goes the historical record.  Dall’s excision is notable for a number of reasons.  As with many stories of “difficult women,” the leap to cite personality issues as the reason for exclusion by her peers obscures more than it reveals.  This paper argues it was the radical politics born from her Unitarian upbringing, and her continued devotion to that liberal branch of Protestantism, along with her Transcendentalist proclivities that made her difficult to pin down.  More specifically, it will engage in a critical reading of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s The Woman’s Bible with an eye to what is carefully curated passages and commentaries obscure about the kind of biblically-rooted and radical women’s rights advocacy (which included a reimagining of sex work) that Dall brought to light in The College, the Market, and the Court.