Sarah Grimké was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on 26 November 1792 and lived on her family’s plantation for 24 years, before moving to Philadelphia. Influenced by the writings of John Woolman, she joined the Quakers where she encountered opposition to her ambition to join the clergy from the patriarchal Quaker council. She and her sister, Angelina, toured New England for years, giving lectures and teaching about Abolition and women’s rights. Her writing focuses on the inherent equality of the sexes and the need to rectify the discrimination against women who are treated in a way that Grimké compares to slaves, toys, and objects of “animal gratification.” Grimké’s source text is the Bible and her Abolitionist rhetoric relies heavily on the biblical argument that God created humans in his own image and it is unacceptable for humans to decide on the life or death of another. She very rarely writes of non-humans or of the need to abstain from eating them. One exception is her biography of Joan of Arc, in which she notes Joan’s view that non-human animals, while lacking language or any effective means of communication (with humans, at least), do feel pain and love. Throughout her writing, the treatment of non-human animals is used as a point of comparison with the status of women and enslaved people. She died on 23 December 1873 in Hyde Park, Massachusetts.                                                                   

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Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman. Addressed to Mary S. Parker, President of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1838.

Joan of Arc. A Biography. Translated from French. Boston: Adams & co., 1867.