Defining womanhood: Lucretia Coffin Mott and the transformation of femininity

Kenneth Burke claims that “bridging devices”; are important symbolic tools for overcoming division within a social order. This study investigates the use of “bridging devices”; through an analysis of an early feminist text: Lucretia Coffin Mott's “Discourse on Woman”; (1849). Mott uses the Quaker concept of the “inner light”; to balance the tension between her conservative cultural milieu and her radical goals. Mott's rhetoric is instructive for modern feminists who face the task of uniting women with widely disparate cultural roots.