A Vote for Ladies’ Liberty “Give me liberty or give me death.” Patrick Henry brings a profound idea to the surface, a life without freedom, is worse than being dead. Throughout history, there recurring patterns of control and revolution. Whether revolt is violent and gory, like the American Revolution, or peaceful exemplified by Gandhi’s nonviolent protest, it involves discrimination on some level. “Deja Vu” ensues at the turn of the 20th century with women suffragists.In Iron Jawed Angels by Katja von Garnier, a dramatized depiction of the push for women’s suffrage centralized around efforts and conflicts of NAWSA, National American Women’s Suffrage Association, then later on, the NWA, National Women’s Association. The director accentuates the idea that because NAWSA’s methodologies are …show more content…
too passive and concentrated on a smaller scale, women’s suffrage was not a national issue and often muffled by issues, like the Civil War and Reconstruction. The National American Women’s Suffrage Association, or NAWSA, had been created in 1890 and became the most significant organization in favor of women’s right to vote during the early 1900’s.
Their method for the push of women’s rights resided in the support from state and local levels of government, or state by state. Lock Jawed Angels takes place when only 8 states had established women’s suffrage in 22 years. NAWSA’s plan was too slow and too passive for women like Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, who joined NAWSA’s Congressional Committee in 1912. DIsplayed as stalwart, brilliant, and passionate, these two women, “worked with Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst in the militant wing of the British suffrage movement.” The British suffrage movement involved more violent and extreme approaches in their pushes; it was not uncommon for women in the British suffrage to have been arrested during protests. Through their participation, “radicalized” Lucy Burns and Alice Paul attempted to institute similar methodologies in America, but NAWSA rejected them utterly. NAWSA believed that although the process was drawn-out, state support would come around and eventually have to be approved by
Congress. Burns and Paul wanted to increase the awareness of exploitation women were victims of; they founded the Congressional Union for Women's Suffrage, or CU, in 1913 and created The Suffragist, a weekly journal. This established a form of making information more accessible to the public and gain support for their cause. However, “One month later, immediately following NAWSA’s annual convention, Paul was told that she could retain her chairmanship of the Congressional Committee only if she resigned from the CU and abandoned the policy of holding all Democrats responsible for congressional inaction on suffrage.” NAWSA’s opposition and demands lead to the most important and effective organization the fight for women’s suffrage had ever seen. Burns and Paul leave NAWSA to create a separate entity. The NWA is much more aggressive in their tactics. They begin with recruitment and advertising making an early reference to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory incident where 146 women had died, “A vote is a fire escape” in the movie is very significant. They portray the realization of working class are making with this line. The idea that suffrage means they can make a difference comes to fruition. Ideas like this is how the NWA rallies support early on and only grows from there. Influence expands and eventually reaches Senator Leighton’s wife, uninterested at first, but after realizing that her husband controls virtually aspects of her life, she makes monetary contributions to the NWA. However, the largest effect happens when she is sent to a workhouse and Senator Leighton is horrified by the mistreatment she clearly gone through, being treated worse than animals. His words are powerful when he exclaims, “she is ill” a realization of how unnecessary and unjustified the situation is. All in all, women’s suffrage was 64 year struggle in the United States and cannot be forgotten. The fight for the 19th amendment was the first step towards a building a new accepted societal norm where women are just as large of an influence as men are in the world, and forever be an example of how people, regardless of race, ethnicity, class, or education level band together and work towards one goal. Without the NWA, the United States would most likely still be battle disenfranchisement based on sex today.
Many may think this is an obvious observation to be made, yet the interpretation of titles often goes unnoticed or is simply overlooked. Hall gives a statement which gives the reader an understandable interpretation of the title when she states, “The activists of Elizabethton belonged to a vulnerable tradition of disorderly women, women who, in times of political upheaval, embody tensions that are half-conscious or only dimly understood” (Hall). This statement alone sheds light onto exactly how many different components the common marginalization of women in society takes place in. Women, not only in this time period, but also currently are often either overlooked or simply claimed to being not understood when seen attempting to create names for themselves. This may be why feminism often has a negative connotation connected to it. Feminism is ultimately the advocacy for equality of both genders in society, and this is exactly what was represented all throughout Jacquelyn Hall’s article. This was done so when Hall mentioned the common instances where female militancy had often gone “unseen” due to the fact that it was a contradiction of conventional wisdom and had simply fractured America’s image of what an ideal woman should represent. This image is often categorized as slightly submissive towards men, while behaving in a meek, controlled manner in all situations, no matter the
These events were often talked about in the media, thus raising awareness for women’s suffrage (The Women’s Rights Movement). Alice Paul wasn’t alone in her efforts. Lucy Burns, also a member of the NWP, organized political campaigns, and was the editor of the Suffragist (Lucy Burns). Paul, Burns and the Silent Sentinels picketed in front of the White House (Alice Paul, 1885-1977). They were often harassed because of their progressive beliefs.
While being born in the modern times, no woman knows what it was like to have a status less than a man’s. It is hard to envision what struggles many women had to go through in order to get the rights to be considered equal. In the essay The Meanings of Seneca Falls, 1848-1998, Gerda Lerner recalls the events surrounding the great women’s movement. Among the several women that stand out in the movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton stands out because of her accomplishments. Upon being denied seating and voting rights at the World Antislavery Convention of 1840, she was outraged and humiliated, and wanted change. Because of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s great perseverance, the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 was a success as well as a great influence on the future of women’s rights.
Another aspect that brought many women into abolitionism was the play on their emotions. Although the stereotype of women being very emotional beings is extremely subjective, it is, more times than not, very true. And I, being a woman, can vouch for that idea, even though I would rather not admit to it. Garrison and his writers, knowing this, played to women’s emotions in the urge to get them more involved. And this notion later helped women bring others into the movement by using their own emotions to play on the h...
1. The chosen book titled “Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women 's Right Movement” is written by Sally McMillen in 2008. It is a primary source, as long as its author for the first time opens the secrets of the revolutionary movement, which started in 1848 from the convention held by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Stanton. It is not a secondary source, as long as information from the book appears for the first time. Stanton did not reveal much in her memoirs, so the author had to work hard to bring this information on the surface. The convention changed the course of history by starting protecting women’s rights and enhancing overall gender equality. The book is a reflection of women’s activity in the name of their freedom and rights equality during fifty years. The book is significant both to the present and to the past time, as long as there are many issues in the society related to the women’s rights, and to the time studied in the class.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, along with many other women, packed into a convention on a hot July day to all fight for a common cause; their rights. At the first Women’s Rights convention, Stanton gave a heroic speech that motivated the fight for the cause to be even stronger. Through Stanton’s appliances of rhetorical devices such as emotional, logical, and ethical appeals, she was able to her win her point, change the opinions of many, and persuade people to follow her.
Anthony was a strong leader of the National Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) . Anthony was arrested in Rochester, New York for voting, claiming that the 14th amendment allowed her to vote. She refused to pay bail and applied for habeas corpus, but her lawyer paid for her to keep the case from Supreme Court, Susan B. Anthony was fined fined $100 (Susan B. Anthony). In 1877, Susan B. Anthony gathered a petition from 26 states with 10,000 signatures, but congress snickered at her. After all of Susan B. Anthony’s hard fighting in 1920 all American women were able to vote with the Nineteenth Amendment, also know as the Susan B. Anthony
“I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves” – Mary Wollstonecraft. In the 19th century the hot topic was women’s rights everybody had an opinion about it. Of course the expected ones like Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had much to say but a few unexpected ones like William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass spoke out for women’s rights. The focus will be the responsibilities and roles that the activists played in the Women’s Rights or Feminist Movement. The relevance to the theme is the activists had a very important role toward reaching the ultimate goal of the Women’s Rights Movement. The Women’s Rights Movement was one of the most essential times in American history; it was the fight for women acquiring the same rights as men. Susan B. Anthony was considered the leader of the Women’s Rights Movement after she was denied the right to speak in a temperance convention; she had the responsibility of creating the National Women’s Suffrage Association (NWSA) and helping to secure voting rights by her historic court case, the Trials of Susan B. Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an important women’s rights activist that helped plan the first organized women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York and wrote the Declaration of Sentiments. Lucretia Mott worked along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton to plan the first women’s rights convention and wrote the, “Discourse on Women”. Lucy Stone formed the American Women’s Suffrage Association (AWSA) and convince individual states to join the effort towards women rights. These women had an influence in the National American Women’s Suffrage Association’s (NAWSA) achievement of the goals in the Women’s Rights Movement. These women had a profound effect on reaching equal rights between men and women.
After the success of antislavery movement in the early nineteenth century, activist women in the United States took another step toward claiming themselves a voice in politics. They were known as the suffragists. It took those women a lot of efforts and some decades to seek for the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. In her essay “The Next Generation of Suffragists: Harriot Stanton Blatch and Grassroots Politics,” Ellen Carol Dubois notes some hardships American suffragists faced in order to achieve the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Along with that essay, the film Iron-Jawed Angels somehow helps to paint a vivid image of the obstacles in the fight for women’s suffrage. In the essay “Gender at Work: The Sexual Division of Labor during World War II,” Ruth Milkman highlights the segregation between men and women at works during wartime some decades after the success of women suffrage movement. Similarly, women in the Glamour Girls of 1943 were segregated by men that they could only do the jobs temporarily and would not able to go back to work once the war over. In other words, many American women did help to claim themselves a voice by voting and giving hands in World War II but they were not fully great enough to change the public eyes about women.
While the women’s suffrage movement was none violent and mainly carried out by organized meetings, lobbying congressman, and picketing protests, the women that participated in it could do nothing to stop the violence of their oppressors from coming to them. In January 1917, the National Women’s Party, led by suffragists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, began to picket, six days a week, in front of the white house for their right to vote. At first largely ignored, they became under frequent attack with no help from the police. Then starting th...
Cooney, Robert. Winning the vote: The Triumph of the American Women Suffrage Movement. California: American Graphic Press, 2005. Print.
Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote the history of the women 's movement to actually construct the movement, and thus, history. Tetrault studies the politics within the suffrage movement at the time of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, and posits that the constructed "mythology" continues to define American history. Tetrault shows that the prevailing narrative ignores Lucy Stone 's work and the efforts of women of color, male suffragists, and other reformers. Tetrault 's viewpoint aligns with those scholars in this reading list arguing the need for reform to the waves metaphor and periodization
The movie Iron Jawed Angels is about a group of women who want to get the right to vote all over North America. The women use many different methods or tactics to get the men to notice them and support their cause, they set up a parade on the day of President Wilson’s Inauguration so that they would get a big crowd. During this parade, none of the men watching thought that it was right for them to be walking the streets trying to get people to change the law, they started to yell insults like “If you were my wife I would bash your head in!” and “Go back home to your mother!”. Soon after that, the men had gotten through the ropes that were holding them back and they started to beat the women which were walking in the parade. The police officers who were on patrol just walked away because before the parade was fully planned one of the girls went to the police station to ask them to patrol the parade and the police chief said that they would patrol the parade, but they wouldn’t help
Reaction Paper 1: Iron Jawed Angels “Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity” (von Garnier, 2004, part 10) and that is exactly what courage was viewed as when the women’s suffrage movement erupted in the mid 1800’s and it was quite the uphill battle from there. Iron Jawed Angels captures the height of the women’s suffrage movement with Alice Paul, a liberal feminist, as the front woman in the battle against Congress. Paul’s determination to pass a constitutional amendment can be seen through her dauntless efforts to go against the societal norms of the time to fight for women’s rights. Through the first wave of the women’s suffrage movement seen in Iron Jawed Angels, the struggles women endured for equality have a lasting impact on American society.
This movie gave a glimpse of the women of the 1917 Women’s Suffrage movement in their fight for women’s equality, which included their right to vote and the right run for office. The movie specifically addressed the many struggles that women who were involved in the movement endured during this time, as they had to sacrifice their marriages, endure rejection, withstand abuse and throughout all, attempt to stay hopeful.