The Woman’s Bible

The Woman’s Bible is a book by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, first published in 1895 (with a second part published in 1898). It’s a pioneering work of feminist biblical commentary: Stanton and a committee of women focus on passages of scripture that have traditionally been used to define women’s roles, and then challenge the assumptions, translations, and interpretations that cast women as naturally subordinate.

Rather than rewriting the Bible itself, the book offers pointed notes and arguments on selected texts — questioning how religious authority has been used to justify inequality in the home, the church, and public life. The tone is direct and reformist: it urges readers to separate enduring moral insight from cultural prejudice, and it treats women’s equality as something that should not be negotiable in theology or society.

Its publication caused an uproar in its own day, including sharp criticism from clergy and discomfort within parts of the suffrage movement — precisely because it goes after a foundation many people considered untouchable: the religious “proof texts” behind women’s subordination. That controversy is part of the book’s historical importance today, alongside its role in the longer tradition of women’s rights writing and religious critique.