Lucinda Lee Dalton

Lucinda Lee Dalton (born Lucinda Lee; February 9, 1847 – November 24, 1925) was a Utah teacher, and suffragist. She shared her views through essays and poems published in the Woman's Exponent, a periodical for Latter-day Saint women.

Raised by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and devout to the faith, Dalton was a feminist. As a child, she felt jealous of boys for the freedom and privileges they enjoyed and felt that girls were neglected by the education system. She became a women's rights activist, believing that women should have the right to suffrage, education, property, control over their money, and custody of their children. As a teacher, she advocated for equal educational and recreational opportunities for girls.

Dalton supported polygamy, arguing that it allowed more women to marry whom she deemed the few "good men", and bore six children with her husband Charles, who married her as his fourth wife. Her writings have been noted by critics for poetically conveying the role and struggles of Mormon women in her time.

Early life Dalton was born in Coosa County, Alabama, to Eliza Foscue and John Percival Lee. Her parents joined the LDS Church in Texas in 1849, and they made the trek to Utah Territory shortly after their conversion. Seven years later her family moved to Beaver, Utah. Despite her family's poverty, Dalton's parents tried to teach her at home and let her attend school as long as possible.

When Lucinda's father remarried, her sister Emma came to stay with her, and Emma married Charles in 1871. In 1876, Emma left Charles and Lucinda, as well as the LDS Church, and moved to Arkansas and then California. She believed that women had the right to suffrage, education, property, control over their earned money, and custody of their children. She argued that since a woman loses all her property when she marries, that it would be more advantageous for her to not officially marry so she could still buy and sell land and have legal claim over her own children and her own body. Dalton also argued that new brides should be allowed to decide when they have their first child.

Another Latter-day Saint, Jill Mulvay, in Sunstone, called her poems "refreshingly imaginative, devoid of maudlin sentiment which marked much of the poetry of her age."

In a thesis on Dalton authored by Sheree Bench: "As an essayist Dalton defends her religion calls for the expansion of women's political and economic opportunities and asserts that the elevation of women is crucial to achieving the potential of both sexes. As a poet she is a compelling writer who reveals in her poems her apprehensions and aspirations her faith and feminism much of her poetry reflects the same commitment to reform that is clear in her essays and she uses both genres do effective political work." Another thesis writer believed that Dalton's poem Winter Winds "demonstrates the consistent opposition between male-identified and female-identified natural elements within LDS women's literature."

Selected works The items on this list are taken from Sheree Bench's thesis on Dalton unless otherwise noted. In her many contributions to the Woman's Exponent, Dalton is often credited as "L.D.D."

Essays 1872–3

1874

1880

1894

Poems 1873–6

1878–80

1885–93