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While feminism can sometimes be a controversial political and social movement these days, only rarely do people voice the now radical-seeming notion that the world would be a better place if women did not have the vote. Just over one hundred years ago, however, exactly the opposite was true. Many antisuffragists believed that fame, rather than enfranchisement, was the ultimate goal of the women’s suffrage agenda, as suffragists like Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Alice Paul were considered celebrities in their own right. Moreover, women who sought the vote were understood to be the radical troublemakers whose quest for suffrage and fame would bring disaster: divorce rates would rise and domestic life would become a shambles; with these twin threats converging to destroy modern civilization.
Document D
Document D
This political cartoon is titled “Looking Backward,” created by Laura Foster and published in Life Magazine in 1912. The cartoon shows a woman at the top of a staircase with steps labeled “Loneliness,” “Anxiety,” and “Strife,” approaching a stand labeled “Fame,” which the artist is conveying to be the end of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, not “Suffrage” itself, which the woman passes on a lower step. She looks back at children holding out flowers standing on lower steps labeled “Home,” “Children,” “Marriage,” and “Love.”
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
Enfranchisement: The giving of a right or privilege, especially the right to vote
Shambles: A state of total disorder
Source: “Opposition to Suffrage.” History of U.S. Woman’s Suffrage. Accessed 03/14/20. http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/naows-opposition.
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