Throughout her adulthood, she was an advocate for forest conservation, women's rights, abolition of slavery, and equal educational opportunities for African-Americans. Whitney was an individualist, who lived independently and cut her hair short, which annoyed her Victorian neighbors. She wrote of her independent nature in one of her poems, "You are welcome, world, to criticize, carp and croak yourself hoarse if you will." She was active in political, literary and artistic circles and supported liberal activists, sculptors and other artists, entertaining people like Harriet Hosmer and Edmonia Lewis at her home. One of her friends and supporters was writer Annie Adams Fields, who found her to be a "noble, simple, strong living woman.