Campbell Class Discussion & Required Reading Response

Option: 2

Each timeline were signifactly alike in many ways and notably different in others. Laurie Mann’s Timeline of Women’s Suffrage in the United States and “One Hundred Years Towards Suffrage” (hosted by NAWSA) both started in 1776 with Abigail Adams's letter to her husband. A History of the American Suffragist Movement timeline started much earlier in 1637 with Anne Hutchinson being convicted of sedition and expelled from the Massachusetts colony for her religious ideas. Next this timeline went on to 1652 with The Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers, which were founded in England. Quakers then made vital contributions to the abolitionist and suffrage movements in the United States. One Quaker woman, Mary Dyer, was hung in 1660 for preaching in Boston, then it went on to talk about Abigail Adams's letter to her husband. I thought this was ironic because the other two timelines did not include these historical facts. The final timeline, Women and Social Movements was formated differently from each of the three other timelines. It was very descriptive and did not have each event listed yearly, yet it had paragraphs about each movement mostly occuring during the 19th-20th century.

Mann's timeline was catorgorized into 6 sections started in 1776 and ending in 1920. It gradually shows how women began to get more and more rights, ending with The Nineteenth Amendment, called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment being ratified by Tennessee on August 18. It becomes law on August 26.

One Hundred Years toward Suffrage as I previously stated starts with Adams writing her letter to her husband as well, yet it ends in 1923 with The National Woman's Party first proposes the Equal Rights Amendment to eliminate discrimination on the basis of gender. Furthermore, it has never been ratified.

The WASM timeline was uniquely different as well.This timeline also describes other movements that not in the other timelines, such as anti-sweatshop and anti-feminist. Each timelines is alike in many ways but different in others, but they are all unique in showing how women and their rights have progressed throughout the centuries.


Required Reading Response:

Campbell starts off her argument by showing how Women struggled for the right to speak. She stated "in the 19th century America, femininity and rhetorical action were seen as mutually exclusive. No "true woman" could be a public persuader. (Campbell 294). She stated things like true speakers, back then took stands aggressively, initiated action and called ttention to themselves which were not seen as values in women or one's that they should possess. Activities requiring such qualities as then were though to "unsex" women.

Furthermore, when women did have the courage to speak publicly they had to downplay their selves to sort of defuse the illusion of giving a speech, in order not to be critized or ridiculed.

Women were stuck with having to prove themselves as good speakers and equal on the same level as men, while including the aspect of femininity in their rhetoric to prove their quality as speakers. In the earliest periods, most advotactes believed that women were naturally suited for mothers, or wives but increased opportunities and rights produced that "education would make women more virtuous, increased economic rights for married women, and would produce better mothers."(Campbell 298)