Women's Suffrage Timelines/Campbell Discussion

Given the multifaceted nature of the women's suffrage movement and its tendency to be almost inspearably entwined with other movements, such as the temperance movement, it is not surprising that each timeline emphasizes various parts of the movement. The organization of each time line, in particular, reveals varying representations of the movement.

Laurie Mann's timeline breaks the women's suffrage movement into categories characterized by the types of social action used at the time - first organizing women against slavery, then for their own rights, the division in the movement of black suffrage vs. women's suffrage, the beginnings of civil disobedience, and pickets and protests of the 20th centruy. She begins her timeline with Abigail Adams, and the choronicals the years in which women's votes were rescinded by many states, and by 1807 each state had passed legeslation forbidding the female vote. I found this very interesting as was completely surprised that early in US history female could indeed vote. This also explains why the women's vote movement became prominent after the turn of the 19th century.

The NAWSA "One Hundred Years" timeline focuses more on educational and literary events than does Mann. This timeline also include more about African American women's roles in the movement, including Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Ida Wells-Barnett. The timeline continues a few years past the 1919 amendment, implying that although suffrage was gained, the women's movement did not stop there.

"A History..." begins much earlier that the previous two - Anne Hutchinson is the first woman introduced, rather than Abilgail Adams. This timeline emphasizes women's rights conventions, property rights, and schisms in the movement over slavery, women's suffrage vs. total suffrage, and conservatism vs. progressiveness within the movement.

All three of the above timelines show the major connections between the suffrage and temperance movement: yet, the suffrage movement was often held back for fear that it women could vote, they would ban alcohol. I found this ironic, considering that, as Campbell writes, women were supposed to be morally superior and many argued that allowing women to vote and participate in politics would "clean up" the scene.

The fourth timeline is quite unique in structure: it in organized as a sort of dictionary of social movments in which women were involved in some way - not necessarily just suffrage movements. I found this very helpful to augment my understanding of the other three - since it is not in chronological order, it is limited in it's helpfulness of understanding the progression and evolution of the women's rights movement, but it provides greater detail and a broader scope in which to examine suffrage, especailly in relationship to other social movements.

After reading all four timelines, I was interested to see that each included dates when Western states enfranchised women...and how many more years it took for the East Coast to jump on the bandwagon. It seems that the West US was far more progressive and the East Coast more conservative, which is generally opposite of today's political map.

Reading Respose: Campbell "Man Cannot Speak for Her"

Campbell's critical study of women's rhetoric begins with the denial of women's ability to speak publically. She considers the definitions of "feminine," the concepts of "true womanhood" and the "cult of domesticity" in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and why these ideas conflicted with the possibilty of female orators. She oints out that although women were supposed to have more moral sensitvity that men, they were forbidden to speak out against the immoralities of slavery and prostitution, and out of this contradiction came the women's movement.

Campbell also considers the effects of limited educational and limited occupations for women on the rhetorical styles that resulted - the voice, tone, and audience construction she sees as direct results from the craft-learning style of teaching and culture the women experienced.

Her final major sources for critical study are the two main types of arguements for women's rights: the "natural rights" vs. "expedincy" - the natural rights argument was percieved as morr threatening because it proposed that women and men were, indeed, equal and capable of the same things. The other arguement proposed that because women and men were different, women's rights would aid their abilities as wives and mothers, and thus further aid society.

Campbell asks the reader to consider how the obstacles of the women's rights movement still affect today's women, as well as how this illuminates rhetorical devices of modern female writers. She also asks the reader to consider the interaction between the scholarly study and the study as a feminist of this movement.