Campbell Discussion

Option 2:

Laura Mann’s timeline starts in 1776 with Abigail Adams writing to her husband asking him to remember the ladies while he is at the continental congress. She points out how in the following years women lost the right to vote in all states finally ending in 1807 when New Jersey revoked the right for women to vote.

She then goes onto divide her timeline into sections starting with “women join the abolitionist movement,” then “women begin to organize for their own rights,” next “suffrage movement divides of black vs. woman suffrage,” “civil disobedience in tried,” and finally “suffrage activists enter the 20th century.”

The way she divides these sections very clearly shows how the movement for women’s rights was closely interwoven with the fight to end slavery, and then for black men to vote sometimes ignoring their own fight for women’s rights. Her timeline focuses primarily on the fight for the right to vote and does not discuss much else. Eventually in 1920 women obtain the right to vote with the 19th amendment and Laura Mann’s timeline ends there.

Like Mann’s timeline the NAWSA time line starts in 1776 with Abigail Adams writing to her husband asking him to remember the ladies. This timeline is not clearly divided up into sections like Mann’s and seems to have a slightly different focus. Although women’s suffrage is definitely important there is a greater focus on their gains in education and publishing when compared to Mann’s. The NAWSA timeline also mentions quite a few events where women’s rights and African American’s rights intersect.

The third timeline, A History of the American Suffragist movement, starts earlier than the previous two with Ann Hutchinson being expelled from the Massachusetts community in 1637, and then the founding of the Quakers in 1652. This one also goes onto mention Abigail Adams writing to her husband, obviously a very important moment in women’s rights history. It goes onto offer a perhaps more balanced view of events combining both the right to vote and the educational accomplishments of women better than the other two in my opinion. This one like the other two end in 1920 with the right to vote.

This makes me wonder if as soon as women could legally vote people assumed the fight for women’s vote was over. It seems to me that even if they had the legal right there might have been some social constraints that would have kept women from the polls that would have needed to be addressed later. I honestly do not know what the numbers are like today but I’d be willing to bet from 1920-1950 at least fewer women than men voted simply because they thought their proper place was still the home, and I wonder if even in more recent history if wives would vote for whoever/whatever their husbands voted for because it was a public rather than private issue.


*** I could not see the other timeline, it told me it was password protected and I would need to log on to see it. Sorry if I missed something.


Campbell Discussion:

I think Campbell considers the style female writers of the time took and why they used this style. She calls it a feminine style of writing (or speaking) but not necessarily employed only by females. This style of writing seemed to almost contradict itself in some ways because women wanted to present their arguments for more rights or better education, but at the same time if they spoke out forcefully they would be labeled unfeminine and therefore lose any possible credibility they had in the eyes of their audience. This required women to present their argument but then come up with a justification for being able to argue this. Sometimes this justification could end up rather contradictory such as the argument for women to have better education because then they could be better mothers and wives. While education in and of itself is a good thing, if women are only being educated to then continue their domestic lives is that really much of a positive change?