Alva Vanderbilt Belmont: Unlikely Champion of Women's Rights

A New York socialite and feminist, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont was known tobe domineering, temperamental, and opinionated. Her resolve to get her own wayregardless of the consequences stood her in good stead when she joined the Americanwoman suffrage movement in 1909. Thereafter, she used her wealth, her administrativeexpertise, and her social celebrity to help convince Congress to pass the 19thAmendment and then to persuade the exhausted leaders of the National Woman's Partyto initiate a world wide equal rights campaign. Sylvia D. Hoffert argues thatBelmont was a feminist visionary and that her financial support was crucial to thesuccess of the suffrage and equal rights movements. She also shows how Belmont'sactivism, and the money she used to support it, enriches our understanding of thepersonal dynamics of the American woman's rights movement. Her analysis of Belmont'smemoirs illustrates how Belmont went about the complex and collaborative process ofcreating her public self.