Growing out of the abolitionist movement, the woman’s rights movement also recognized the power of Milton’s writings, but for very different reasons. Sarah Grimké, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, among others, read Milton through a uniquely feminist lens that indicates a notable shift in women’s attitudes toward the author of Paradise Lost. These women challenged society’s deep-seated assumptions about women’s inferiority and dependence on men, assumptions that were often justified by Milton’s representations of Eve in Paradise Lost. What distinguished Grimké and her followers was their radical response to Milton on the question of gender authority. This response led to their attempts to reverse years of interpretation of the Bible and Milton’s epic poem. Unlike Mary Wollstonecraft who, in her “Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” denied the literal truth of the biblical creation of Eve from one of Adam’s ribs because it subjugated women, Grimké and others accepted God’s word, but denied the tradition of interpretation, of which Milton was an integral part, that made Eve inferior to Adam, arguing instead that man and woman were created equal in the sight of God.