In Her Own Right : The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (46 page)

As Bandura explains, “learning” is an ongoing, continuous process with three stages—acquisition, performance, maintenance—but no conclusion. First an individual
acquires a behavior by observing others (“models”) perform it. One can learn from ideas and books as well as from individuals and experience. If the behavior is attractive, if it is rewarded, if the models are perceived to be powerful or nurturing or both, the incentive to duplicate the behavior is increased. The converse is also true. Individuals can then “perform” the behavior by observing it more closely, by imagining themselves doing it, by actually practicing it, or by some combination of these. Whether or not an individual will advance to this second learning stage—performance—depends on two other factors: whether he has the physical capability to undertake the behavior and what he expects the consequences to be.

Next, the newly learned behavior normally will be “maintained” if it is “reinforced,” either externally or internally. If it proves to be successful, if it is positively reinforced by people who are important to the individual, or if it enhances his prospects or status, the individual will continue the newly learned behavior. If reaction to one’s behavior is negative, if one is “punished,” the behavior will not be repeated. Unrewarded behavior may persist if it contributes to the individual’s self-esteem. It might result from satisfaction in a previously acceptable form of behavior, from ongoing admiration for those who initially modeled it, or from having become one’s own model. What biographers of an earlier generation might have labeled courage or obstinance, Bandura calls “self-reinforcement” or “internalizing” the approval standard.

As an individual masters a behavior or copes with a situation, survives a crisis or endures punishment, he gains confidence in his ability to do so again and is encouraged to persist. This cycle of competence/confidence/competence Bandura calls “self-efficacy.”
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Finally, because “learning” is continuous and dependent upon reciprocal interactions, any behavior can be adapted or abandoned at any time, as the individual continues to interact and think about his social, physical, and psychological environment. Bandura’s individual is not passive. He has the capacity for constant reevaluation of his environment and ongoing reassessment of his performance and competence. He always functions in the context of feedback.

Social learning theory and “common sense” history share an interest in the importance of role models for individuals. Unlike some other aspects of psychological methodologies, historians are accustomed to and comfortable with explanations of behavior based on emulation. The importance attached to the character of parents and teachers among traditional biographers indicates a recognition that children pattern themselves on certain adults, or “role models.” As defined by the social scientist, a “role model” is someone whose “role is modeled,” whose behavior is copied, or whose actions and attitudes can influence one’s own. Bandura’s theory cannot predict who will be a role model. His research does indicate that individuals tend to copy the behavior of those who are powerful or successful or nurturing, which could explain why Stanton chose the well-known Lucretia Mott rather than the retiring Angelina Grimké Weld as her mentor in 1840. Both women were abolitionists and feminists, but only Mott had successfully combined her career with marriage. According to Bandura, the concept of role models is essential to the social learning process. Certainly role models were central to the development of Elizabeth Cady Stanton as a feminist.

Social learning theory is a congenial tool for biographers. It uses as data experiences or events or ideas that can be documented by evidence; it credits individuals with the ability to think about actions, alternatives, and results; and it accepts the uniqueness of individuals and events. It is appropriate because it uses as evidence actual human behavior—the experience, examples, and expectations of individuals that can be recovered by historians in the primary sources. It is readily accessible
to historians in a series of books and articles by Bandura and his colleagues. Finally it allows for autonomy of individual action and independence of individual thought. Like biography, Bandura’s theory puts the person front and center. It illuminates iconoclasts as well as conformists. It credits the individual with the ability to think about decisions—to observe, absorb, symbolize, remember, recall, anticipate, imagine, consider, debate, evaluate, and decide, and then to reconsider.

Three problems remain. The first is the matter of style and syntax. To avoid the intrusion of psychological jargon in the narrative, there have been few direct references to Bandura or social learning theory. Rather, readers should be alert to such key phrases as “role model,” “pattern,” “developing,” “encouraged,” and “copying.” Second, the question of the relevance of present theory to the past cannot be answered until more attempts to apply it have been made. This biography tests social learning theory in a historical context.

Third, social learning theory cannot directly explain why the same events or role models do not provoke the same reactions. Why was Elizabeth the only one of the five Cady daughters to become a feminist leader? Rather than answer the question, the theory suggests that differences in inherent intelligence, perceptions, interests, abilities, and emotional responses to experience, plus age and birth order, account for diverse, even diametrical behavior among siblings or others of similar background. Bandura again allows for individual differences among siblings and within peer groups, but he does not provide for rigorous explanation of these differences. As Stanton, sounding like a behaviorist herself, explained on the opening page of her autobiography:

The psychical growth of a child is not influenced by days and years but by the impressions passing events make on its mind. What may prove a sudden awakening to one, giving an impulse in a certain direction that may last for years, may make no impression on another. People wonder why the children of the same family differ so widely, though they have had the same domestic discipline, the same school and church teaching, and have grown up under the same influences and with the same environments. As well wonder why lilies and lilacs in the same latitude are not all alike in color and equally fragrant. Children differ as widely as these in the primal elements of their physical and psychical life
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Bandura would agree with the “common sense” convictions of earlier biographers that some people were simply “born that way.”

With the exception of these reservations, social learning theory seems well suited to a study of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Her life can be viewed as a progression of behavior patterns based on successive role models. Throughout her life most of her behavior was approved by only a few people, but those individuals were so important to her that she could persevere despite the criticism of the majority. Eventually, having “internalized” the standard of total female “self-sovereignty,” Stanton no longer needed any reinforcement other than her own. One could divide this biography into three parts. In chapters 1–3, Stanton “learned” roles; in chapters 4–8, she “practiced” them; in the last three chapters, she “maintained” the roles she had chosen for herself.

For example, during the period in her childhood when she was trying to win her father’s approval, Stanton observed that he admired and praised his son, so she tried to behave like her older brother. She pursued the same activites he did—riding horses, studying Greek, practicing logic. She undertook these activites because she had observed that they were approved by her father, whose approval she sought. She was able to undertake them because she had the physical and mental ability to perform them, and she performed very well. While her father was never enthusiastic
about her mastery of these skills, neither was he disapproving; others in her family circle were more positive. By the time Judge Cady realized that such athletic and academic rigors were unusual and inappropriate in his adolescent and unmarried daughter, she had already internalized his earlier standard of achievement. Furthermore, having been challenged by academics, athletics, legal riddles, and theological debates, she became competent in these areas; indeed she became expert. Her early competence was one source of the self-confidence that characterized her behavior throughout her life. Learning that she was capable, she became increasingly capable.

As she matured, Stanton’s sense of self-worth was reinforced by a succession of individuals who were important to her. Each of them approved of increasingly untraditional behavior on her part, and each was supplanted by a more radical model. Her father was replaced by her brother-in-law Edward Bayard and her cousin Gerrit Smith, who were in turn replaced by her husband Henry Stanton. Eventually women displaced men as her most important models and mentors. Elizabeth Smith Miller, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony shared influence over Stanton’s behavior. Finally, Stanton had so internalized her own standard of female autonomy that she became her own authority. In her old age she acted without the approval, and frequently despite the disapproval, of her former allies.
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Psychological methodology enables the biographer to identify those behaviors Elizabeth Cady Stanton copied from others and combined into her ideal vision. Her discipline, her academic habits, her logical approach to arguments, skill in debate, wide reading, easy sleeping habits, and her republican attitudes about money and education were patterned after her father. Her horseback riding, executive ability, housekeeping skill, self-indulgence, fashion-consciousness, upper-class tastes, pleasure in her rocking chair, diplomatic manner, and vivacity were behaviors found in her mother. Her matriarchal household, religious skepticism, carpet mending, and gracious bearing were inspired by Lucretia Mott. Her dramatic speaking style, political tactics, and risk taking she adapted from reformers and revivalists; her ideology derived from her wide reading and tolerance for new ideas. None of these models accounts, however, for her humor, curiosity, energy, habitual cheerfulness, sexual attitudes, childbearing practices, or her appetite for food and controversy.

All of Stanton’s primary mentors were models of independence of one kind or another. Daniel Cady was a self-made man, a Whig in the Jacksonian era, an agricultural innovator, a wealthy republican. Margaret Cady was a woman who tactfully but effectively imposed her will on her household and community. As one contemporary observed, Stanton had “imbibed . . . from her mother that dauntless independence of thought and speech which, for want of a better name, is called the courage of one’s convictions.”
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Similarly Lucretia Mott had been in the forefront of abolition, women’s rights, and Quaker reform; she had survived the attacks of established religious and political authorities and yet was widely admired. Significantly, both Stanton’s mother and Mott provided examples of active, independent old age and widowhood. Such examples prompted Stanton’s admiration and emulation.

Both Stanton’s principal and secondary models duplicated and reinforced many of the same behaviors. For example, Edward Bayard, Charles G. Finney, Gerrit Smith, and Theodore Parker all encouraged her religious inquiry. Bayard, Henry Stanton, and the Welds approved of her skepticism of medical authorities. Her mother and Mrs. Mott applauded her habits of self-indulgence, in terms of taking care of herself, although Mott disapproved of unnecessary extravagance.

From the behaviors Stanton exhibited that seem modeled on other people, it is
clear that her parents and Mrs. Mott played the most prominent roles. Social learning theory does not explain why those three were more influential than others—Henry Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, or such secondary figures as her sisters, deceased brother, Bayard, Hosack, Emma Willard, Finney, Gerrit Smith, or Libby Miller. It does suggest that Stanton perceived her parents and Mrs. Mott as being more powerful and nurturing than any others.

That Stanton did not model her behavior on that of her husband or her closest ally is apparent from her actions. Henry Stanton and Susan B. Anthony played similar roles in her life: each was at one time a source of approval and affection for her; each provided emotional sustenance, was imposed upon, and resented. With each of them Stanton was publicly paired. With each of them Stanton tried to maintain a public facade of agreement, but with each of them the appearance of a bond outlasted the reality of their relationship. Henry Stanton had encouraged her initial reform interest, and Anthony had provided ongoing incentive. Stanton’s husband became less enthusiastic, but her colleague continued to approve of her public behavior. Eventually Anthony supplanted Henry in Elizabeth’s affections. Both Henry and Susan moved in and out of her life and her household, but overall, Stanton probably spent more hours and days with Anthony than any other adult. While Stanton admired certain qualities in each of them—Henry’s oratory, Anthony’s organizational skills—she also disapproved of some of their traits. Her husband’s political opportunism and Anthony’s cold self-righteousness made them less appealing than the models Stanton did select.

Social learning theory can reveal much about a subject, but its application requires knowing a substantial amount to begin with, both about the subject and its models. Because of the roles played by the Cadys and Mrs. Mott, it would be helpful to know more about them and their habits. The lack of information about Margaret Cady is especially frustrating. Genealogical records, the recollections of relatives, and two photographs hardly provide the kind of information that would be useful to social scientists or biographers.

Social learning theory results in many insights into character development and motivation, but there are some aspects of personality it does not explain. One is curious to know more about Stanton’s sexual attitudes and her pervasive interest in religion. Control over decisions affecting pregnancy and the frequency of intercourse were essential aspects of Stanton’s definition of female independence, but the record does not reveal much about how she dealt with these issues. Similarly, freedom from traditional church teachings about woman’s place was another step toward self-sovereignty. Achieving independence in both of these areas represented for Stanton steps toward her idealized self-definition.