Women's Suffrage turns 90...
Aug. 26th, 2010 06:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zalenaToday is the anniversary of women winning the right to vote in the United States. Even though I knew about women's suffrage, it surprised me to learn that this right was only 90 years old. My grandmother was older than the right to vote! When I consider the relatively short period it's been with us, I feel a little more forgiving about the progress that's been made.
Earlier, this year I read another Deborah Tannen book, He Said, She Said about sex and communication difference in our culture. If you've read Tannen's books before, there's not a lot of surprises in this ones. She had less to say about people in private relationships---the way the title suggests---than people in public roles. The only chapter that really caught my attention was one about women and public speaking. I had known, for example, about the ban on women in the pulpit, but I had not known that in 16C England there was a law preventing women from reading the Bible to their own families because this was considered a 'public' act.
But the ban went further than that. A 1573 act of Parliament drew strict divisions by both gender and class: "Aristocratic men and women were still allowed to read the Bible in private, but only men were allowed to read it aloud to the assembled household. Men of the merchant class remained free to read the scriptures in private, but their wives and daughters could no longer share that privilege. Among the lower ranks of society, both men and women alike were denied the right to read the Bible." No wonder the buckled brethren sailed for the New World! (Or were transported here on prison sentences. Like Australia, the US was also a penal colony, but we don't talk about that aspect of our history, nor do we mention indentured servitude where seven years of labor could get a man a parcel of land and a mule.)
Tannen says that in the U.S. women were also barred from speaking in public, "Slaves were not permitted to read in the US... even the US women were barred from speaking from public, among the first women to speak in public were the anti-slavery activists. Two of these were the Grimkey sisters Angelina and Sarah. At first they addressed other women in homes. Then they moved to churches, which were public places, and men could attend their lectures as well."
A contemporary letter-to-the-editor from the period offers the following criticism of women speaking in public,
The appropriate duties of women as stated in the New Testament are unobtrusive and private. When she assumes the place and tone of a man as a public performer, her character becomes unnatural. If the vine whose strength and beauty is to lean upon the trellis work and half conceal its clusters is to assume the independence of the elm, it will not only cease to bear fruit, but fall in shame and dishonor into dust.
[A friend of mine recently named her daughter after a climbing plant. This allusion common in literature is why I would not. Though the biblical story that comes to mind here is the Blasted Fig. (Mark 11:13-25) The tree was not in season, but Jesus curses it anyway for not having fruit and it dies. As an unmarried, childless women, I've often worried some of the more religious members of my family might whip this one out to describe my state.]
The impression of outspoken women was not just that she wanted to communicate ideas, but that she behaved like a man. Early suffragists and abolitionists not only outraged society not only by the policies they were advocating, but by the very fact that they were speaking in public called, "A scamble for the britches."
Finally, Tannen offers the following from the memoir of Vermont's first female governor Madeleine M. Kunin who served from 1985-1991, "The fearful idea that by speaking out I would no longer be a 'good girl.' That my words my antagonize those who heard me was deeply grieving. If I said the wrong thing at the wrong time, I risked punishment, I would not be liked. Worse yet, I would not be loved."
Kunin's sentiment really rang a bell, because I have lived in this fear most my life: of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. And that my speaking out in anyway: in work or my private life would lead to severe personal repercussions, most heartbreaking, the possibility that I would not be loved as a result of my strong ideas or outspokenness. I've been thinking about the topic of women speaking and silent since an essay I read last year by Byatt on Jane Austen. But the flip side of the coin: the power of silence, particularly in personal relationships, will have to wait for another time.
Since the above mostly focuses on women speaking publicly with a side-serving of religious freedom, I thought I would speak to exceptions. Some of you are probably familiar with Anne Hutchinson, Puritan dissenter, and one of the founders of Rhode Island. (Along with our hero and spiritual father of the American tradition of Separation of Church and State Roger Williams.) The question when it comes to Hutchinson has always been whether it was her views or her outspokenness. But the fact that she was branded a heretic and LIVED (albeit in exile) is a powerful and positive testimony both to the courage of her convictions, but the amazing new brand of justice emerging in the new world.
Some of you may be surprised to know that Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet was a friend of Hutchinson though she did not follow Hutchinson's leadership or follow her into exile. Bradstreet is widely regarded as "America's First Poet" and here she writes about the difficulties she faced as a female poet:
I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
Who says my hand a needle better fits,
A Poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong,
For such despite they cast on Female wits.
I also wanted to comment, that poetry was frequently the way in which women (particularly in Britain) found their way around religious bans. Not only was poetry considered an unobtrusive enough activity for dissent to be tolerated (Britain has a fascinating tradition of Catholic poetry, for example), but in the period following the previously mentioned act of parliament, it was not uncommon---particularly for Quaker women---to go into public trances and prophesy in verse. This was tolerated in a way that plain speaking was not. I have always found this fascinating as though madness or art lowers a kind of protective veil around the speaker. I suspect this is true of contemporary dissent as well.
Anyway, I've wandered far from the original purpose of this post: to draw attention to the fact that the women among us have been allowed to vote for 90 years now. But I think you understand my point.
Earlier, this year I read another Deborah Tannen book, He Said, She Said about sex and communication difference in our culture. If you've read Tannen's books before, there's not a lot of surprises in this ones. She had less to say about people in private relationships---the way the title suggests---than people in public roles. The only chapter that really caught my attention was one about women and public speaking. I had known, for example, about the ban on women in the pulpit, but I had not known that in 16C England there was a law preventing women from reading the Bible to their own families because this was considered a 'public' act.
But the ban went further than that. A 1573 act of Parliament drew strict divisions by both gender and class: "Aristocratic men and women were still allowed to read the Bible in private, but only men were allowed to read it aloud to the assembled household. Men of the merchant class remained free to read the scriptures in private, but their wives and daughters could no longer share that privilege. Among the lower ranks of society, both men and women alike were denied the right to read the Bible." No wonder the buckled brethren sailed for the New World! (Or were transported here on prison sentences. Like Australia, the US was also a penal colony, but we don't talk about that aspect of our history, nor do we mention indentured servitude where seven years of labor could get a man a parcel of land and a mule.)
Tannen says that in the U.S. women were also barred from speaking in public, "Slaves were not permitted to read in the US... even the US women were barred from speaking from public, among the first women to speak in public were the anti-slavery activists. Two of these were the Grimkey sisters Angelina and Sarah. At first they addressed other women in homes. Then they moved to churches, which were public places, and men could attend their lectures as well."
A contemporary letter-to-the-editor from the period offers the following criticism of women speaking in public,
The appropriate duties of women as stated in the New Testament are unobtrusive and private. When she assumes the place and tone of a man as a public performer, her character becomes unnatural. If the vine whose strength and beauty is to lean upon the trellis work and half conceal its clusters is to assume the independence of the elm, it will not only cease to bear fruit, but fall in shame and dishonor into dust.
[A friend of mine recently named her daughter after a climbing plant. This allusion common in literature is why I would not. Though the biblical story that comes to mind here is the Blasted Fig. (Mark 11:13-25) The tree was not in season, but Jesus curses it anyway for not having fruit and it dies. As an unmarried, childless women, I've often worried some of the more religious members of my family might whip this one out to describe my state.]
The impression of outspoken women was not just that she wanted to communicate ideas, but that she behaved like a man. Early suffragists and abolitionists not only outraged society not only by the policies they were advocating, but by the very fact that they were speaking in public called, "A scamble for the britches."
Finally, Tannen offers the following from the memoir of Vermont's first female governor Madeleine M. Kunin who served from 1985-1991, "The fearful idea that by speaking out I would no longer be a 'good girl.' That my words my antagonize those who heard me was deeply grieving. If I said the wrong thing at the wrong time, I risked punishment, I would not be liked. Worse yet, I would not be loved."
Kunin's sentiment really rang a bell, because I have lived in this fear most my life: of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. And that my speaking out in anyway: in work or my private life would lead to severe personal repercussions, most heartbreaking, the possibility that I would not be loved as a result of my strong ideas or outspokenness. I've been thinking about the topic of women speaking and silent since an essay I read last year by Byatt on Jane Austen. But the flip side of the coin: the power of silence, particularly in personal relationships, will have to wait for another time.
Since the above mostly focuses on women speaking publicly with a side-serving of religious freedom, I thought I would speak to exceptions. Some of you are probably familiar with Anne Hutchinson, Puritan dissenter, and one of the founders of Rhode Island. (Along with our hero and spiritual father of the American tradition of Separation of Church and State Roger Williams.) The question when it comes to Hutchinson has always been whether it was her views or her outspokenness. But the fact that she was branded a heretic and LIVED (albeit in exile) is a powerful and positive testimony both to the courage of her convictions, but the amazing new brand of justice emerging in the new world.
Some of you may be surprised to know that Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet was a friend of Hutchinson though she did not follow Hutchinson's leadership or follow her into exile. Bradstreet is widely regarded as "America's First Poet" and here she writes about the difficulties she faced as a female poet:
I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
Who says my hand a needle better fits,
A Poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong,
For such despite they cast on Female wits.
I also wanted to comment, that poetry was frequently the way in which women (particularly in Britain) found their way around religious bans. Not only was poetry considered an unobtrusive enough activity for dissent to be tolerated (Britain has a fascinating tradition of Catholic poetry, for example), but in the period following the previously mentioned act of parliament, it was not uncommon---particularly for Quaker women---to go into public trances and prophesy in verse. This was tolerated in a way that plain speaking was not. I have always found this fascinating as though madness or art lowers a kind of protective veil around the speaker. I suspect this is true of contemporary dissent as well.
Anyway, I've wandered far from the original purpose of this post: to draw attention to the fact that the women among us have been allowed to vote for 90 years now. But I think you understand my point.
