Calinda Shely
ENG 540
Romano
2-10-09
Rhetorical Analysis of Sojourner Truth and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Speeches
Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech delivered to the Woman’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio (Campbell version) utilizes most effectively what Bacon calls “reinvention of ‘True Womanhood’” (175). She protests the notion of “womanhood” as defined by a previous speaker at the convention. He apparently claimed that women needed to be helped into carriages, carried over ditches, and have the best place everywhere; Truth, though, immediately confronts this notion and dismisses it as problematic and just plain wrong for her position as an African-American woman. She claims, “Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles or gives me any best place […] and aren’t I a woman? Look at me!” Truth then also raises herself up to her full height and flexes her ample bicep for the audience. Her direct refutation of the previous speaker’s assertion that women are delicate creatures who must be cared for takes the form not only of her words, but also her delivery. Her words are a direct testimony against this man’s claims as she in effect mirrors his phrases, thus making her denouncement of their falseness and lack of applicability to African-American women even stronger for her audience. She is essentially parodying his statements, which causes the man to look somewhat foolish to the audience, and as a result, makes Truth herself look more credible. Her physical presence also serves as a denouncement of the man’s (and audience’s) notions of womanhood. Truth uses first a rhetorical question, “Aren’t I a woman?” and then her own body to further contradict such notions of femininity. Her very physical presence naturally confirms that she is indeed a woman, but a very different kind of woman than that image invoked by other speakers at the convention. She reminds the audience that these definitions of “woman” that they might hold do not fully encompass the true separation of sex: sex, she reminds her audience, crosses the color line.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper uses a very different tactic in her 1893 “Woman’s Political Future” speech. Not relying so much on physical delivery as on the ideas expressed within her speech, Harper utilizes the notion of American solidarity, what Bacon classifies as the notion of the “true-born American,” with her references to the sad plights of people in other countries (208). She first mentions the Chinese, saying “China compressed the feet of her women and thereby retarded the steps of her men.” This reference to the practice of foot-binding brings to mind the terrible images of that painful practice and then makes two consecutive rhetorical appeals. Firstly, it reminds Americans they can be proud that such an atrocity is not practiced in their country. The reference relies on the principle of Americans’ pride in their country, a notion also utilized by African-American men who used the “revolutionary” appeal. Secondly, however, the explicit comparison between foot-binding, denial of women’s suffrage, and “retarded steps” sends a message to the audience that if women are not allowed to participate in the electoral process, the country as a whole will suffer drastically. Harper also mentions the sentencing of Russian prisoners to Siberia. She questions how any woman who petitions the Soviet government on behalf of this practice can do so without also fighting against the evils that plague society because of the lack of women’s rights. This rhetorical question again evokes the horrors of the Siberian labor camps while at the same time appealing to the audience’s pride in their nation. This instance more directly addresses the threat underlying this practice by specifically reminding women of their negligence and the consequences that will result from a continued non-action on the issue of women’s rights. This skillful linking of horrible image, nationalistic pride, and ominous warning helps Harper to better stir the feelings of her audience and thus move them to action.