Katherine Alexander
19th Century Rhetoric
Professor Susan Romano
February 6, 2009
An early spokesperson for abolition of slavery and concurrently for women’s rights, Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) had little education and probably could not write, yet she used her skills to deliver powerful speeches. Anna Julia Haywood Cooper (1858-1964), on the other hand, was well educated and received her Ph.D. at the University of Paris at the age of 67. Both women were fortunate to have had long lives, thus providing many opportunities for them to participate in anti-slavery and women’s rights campaigns.
This short response will compare and contrast speeches by both women in terms of rhetorical devices and styles. Sojourner Truth’s speech of 1851 historically known as her “Ain’t (Aren’t) I a Woman?” is quite succinct as it conveys many ideas framed in rhetoric. Although textual authenticity of her speech cannot be verified, her delivery, as recorded by observers, is deemed exceptional to this date. Her beginning alone, “well children,” places her in a position of feminine power, motherhood. Motherhood, of course, is a venerable institution where virtue is assumed. The rhetoric of domesticity appeals to white women and black women as well as white men and black men. As Bacon indicates (112), the woman rhetor becomes a mediator in that she is juxtaposing her virtue, the desirable feminine characteristic, with speaking in public. Sojourner uses this to her advantage as she challenges traditional assumptions in white society about gender, specifically the assignation of the female to the category of the weak. She explains that she has borne 13 children, ploughed, planted, and has never been led by any man. By placing her allegiance with females of any race, she is first a woman and then a black woman. Most of all, she is a woman of strength. She thus debunks the myth that women are supposed to be weak because of their gender.
Sojourner’s next strategy in this speech is that of apology whereby she defers to the more knowledgeable white woman. Although white women abolitionists purported to be “on her side,” Sojourner seems to have realized that they did completely regard her as their equal simply because she was a woman and mother. Thus, by making this move to place herself in a deferential position to the white abolitionist women, she has created a situation whereby they might be more sympathetic to her, thus making them more pliable to her message. Self-deprecation, more specifically the device of philophronesis (humble submission to mitigate anger), is a method used by early women writers such as Hildegard of Bingen and Hrotswit of Gandersheim to open dialogue with their superior male correspondents. It is interesting that Sojourner uses this device with respect to the white women who are supposed to be her allies. Nevertheless, she proceeds to her next move: an appeal to scriptural authority. Here she turns the words of the bible upside down in an inversion that excludes men from the equation. They had nothing to do with the birth of Christ. This event had solely to do with the God and the Virgin Mary. This is what Bacon regards as a direct invocation of God. By eliminating the middle man, Sojourner has aligned herself with the middlewoman thereby establishing herself in a man’s world, that of the prophet. She has become a prophetess. She then moves as a feminist to defend Eve, who is regarded as a woman who turned the world upside down. Sojourner gives her the power to turn it right side up. Sojourner minced no words!
While Sojourner Truth was in the same economic and intellectual space of the women whom she represented, Anna Julia Haywood Cooper was an intellectual, far better educated than most white women and black women of her era, and certainly on a par with the better educated white men. Although she may have understood some of the difficulties experienced by her fellow black women, she seems to have conceived her role as one of a role model and catalyst to their development. She presents in her speech of 1886 as an ardent feminist who is an authority on scholarship of all ages. First, she cites “Mahomet” and the Koran in her speech with disapproval of the prophet’s lack of mention of the female in his work. She describes the development of the Koran as a response to the needs of the Arabian civilization. As she references writers and scholars of every age, Cooper alludes to the seed of promise in American institutions. She further establishes herself as an authority by citing Madame de Staël’s belief that happiness consists in a sense of progress. Citing MacCauley and Tacitus, Chaucer and Wordsworth, Cooper presents their ideas that societies can be judged as to how they treat their women. While Sojourner Truth alludes to scriptural authority, Cooper invokes the authority of scholars, both religious and secular, from many eras to make her point.
Following this powerful buildup, Cooper makes her next move, an appeal to “Woman and Mother” as caretaker of the future of womanhood. In a move akin to Sojourner Truth’s allusion to the power of Eve, Cooper acknowledges woman’s influence on social progress, placing herself in a world occupied by all women. This opens the way for her to proceed to her plea for the “unprotected colored girls of the South.” She presents these girls as a “promising beautiful class that stand shivering like a delicate plantelet before the fury of tempestuous elements, so full of promise and possibilities, yet so sure of destruction” (Logan, 61). Cooper has thus prepped her audience for her sympathic plea for the preservation of the future of womanhood, especially African American womanhood. Churches, particularly Cooper’s Episcopalian church, were not highly regarded for their progress in women’s issues, although she clearly derides this denomination for its lack of dedication to the cause. As she places herself in the membership of this church, she issues a “call to arms” so that all might march forward to the cause of her people, especially women, so that they might achieve salvation. She ends as she began with an allusion to a great scholar. Ralph Waldo Emerson, preacher and philosopher, stated that “we want the will which advances and dictates [acts]”(Ibid, 74). The question here is how much are we willing to give up in defense of what is right.
Both speechgivers in this response paper seem to have had the same goals. However, their approaches to the matters at hand were largely determined by historical developments of the times in which they lived as well as a large difference in their educational opportunities. It is important to note that rhetorical devices and structure are inherent in both especially as their invoked images of both public and private spheres, terms invoked by Buchanan.
Bibliography
Buchanan, Lindal. “Introduction.” In Regendering Delivery. The Fifth Canon and Antebellum
Women Rhetors. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005.
Bacon, Jacqueline. The Humblest May Stand Forth. Columbia, SC: U. of South Carolina Press,
2002.
Logan, Shirley Wilson. With Pen and Voice. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press,
1995.