The caption, “I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance,” acknowledges that her image had value in the antislavery and women’s rights movements, and by copyrighting it, she could sell copies of her “shadow” to support herself and her causes. At an American Woman Suffrage Association convention in Boston, she commented that she “used to be sold for other people’s benefit, but now she sold herself for her own.”[1]
[1] “The Disfranchised Sex,” The World (New York, NY), May 13, 1870, 2:3.