A Rhetorical Analysis Of I Want A Wife By Judy Brady

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The 1970’s were a time of protest and turmoil for equality, especially for women’s rights and feminism. Steps were being made though, women were hosting sit-ins and marches that were gaining ground. In 1971, Reed v Reed declared sexual discrimination as a violation of the 14th amendment, and Judy Brady wrote “I Want a Wife”. Judy Brady was able to exemplify and criticize women’s treatment and lack of value by writing with repetition, sarcasm, and reversal.
While opening her essay, Brady explains her situation as she was ironing one evening. She was reminiscing about a friend of hers who was fresh out of a divorce, who lost his child to his now ex-wife, and was looking for his next wife. Something suddenly occurred to her as a bizarre thought, she wants her own wife! She reverses the societal norm of a man and a woman, and uses that to catch her audience’s attention. Brady published her essay to a premier issue of …show more content…

She conjures up the next six paragraphs all revolving around “I want”. By choosing to write her essay like this, it does a multitude of things. It shows her determination and steadfastness for proving her point. With every repetition of “I want” and “I want”, it proves to the reader again and again how much willpower she possesses. The repetition also creates sort of a snotty tone, making her sound like she is drawing her line in the sand and standing her ground. Above all, the recurrence of “I want” shows the magnitude of things women do for men that go unnoticed and underappreciated. She lists off an arsenal of things that go unnoticed, while even keeping them to broad topics like child support, physical needs, etc. This repetition inflates her idea that wives are not getting the proper recognition for all the tedious work they perform on a daily basis, while simultaneously making her audience notice some help they have considered or not considered

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