THE LANGUAGE OF WOMEN

LISTEN UP, FELLOW CITIZENS

In the United States in the late 1800s, women weren't allowed to vote. And some people were totally okay with this. Others, like Susan B. Anthony, were definitely not. Anthony insisted on voting in the 1872 presidential election, and guess what? She was arrested for it. (She was also fined $100, which Anthony refused to pay. Well done, Sue.)

After being arrested, Anthony gave a speech to support women's voting rights that has since become a classic. Start by reading the full text of "Woman's Rights to the Suffrage."

Nice and short, right? Which gives us plenty of time to look at a few stylistic strategies she used…

Brevity

Anthony's sentences aren't exactly short and simple—some of them are actually pretty long and complicated. (Keep in mind that she was speaking in 1873, when people just…well, spoke differently.)

But Anthony does keep her entire speech short, and its brevity increases the power of her message. After all, it only takes her 536 words to accomplish the "work" she says she will in her introduction (i.e., the work of proving women are rightful citizens).

Here's the subtext we hear, almost like Anthony's whispering it in our ears: "Actually, it's not going to be very hard work to prove women are citizens. It's not going to take me much time at all, because it's such common sense that it should already be obvious to you dummies."

Repetition

Anthony uses the power of repetition to great effect. When she quotes the preamble of the Constitution, she uses the "we, the people" phrase for the first time. Then she repeats the basic construction of this phrase to great effect when she says:

"It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union."

Anthony also repeats several key words that Jay Heinrichs would probably recognize as code words: first, she uses words that she knows citizens of the United States will recognize and take pride in, such as:

• "United States" (repeated four times)

• "right" – as in "a lawful right" (repeated three times)

• "liberty" (repeated four times)

• "citizen" (repeated seven times)

But she also uses some words that she knows citizens of the United States will recognize and definitely not take pride in, like these:

• "aristocracy" (repeated twice)

• "oligarchy" (repeated five times)

Antithesis

Anthony also makes effective use of a strategy Jay Heinrichs introduced in Chapter 18: antithesis, or the weighing of one argument next to the other. You can recognize this is the "not to…but…" construction, which Anthony uses twice in the following sentence:

"And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people--women as well as men."

In case you don't recall, Heinrichs pointed out that this kind of construction can make you sound objective and can "…offer a quick summary that shows who stands in what corner." (Heinrichs, page 211).

Introduction

Let's look closely at Anthony's introduction. Even the first phrase, which seems at first like a pretty standard way of acknowledging the people she's talking to, has a message hiding in the language: "Friends and Fellow Citizens." By referring to her audience as "fellow citizens," she's making the point that her entire speech is intended to make: she is a citizen just like everyone else listening to her.

Next, Anthony grabs her audience's attention with this juicy phrase: "I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted…" Hmm…voting as a crime? Sounds crazy, right? Yeah, it does.

And it is—that's the point.

Finally, Anthony uses super clear, explicit language to clue her audience in to her main idea when she says, "It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that…" She's not keeping her point a secret—she's drilling it into the heads of everyone listening to make sure nobody misses it.

Conclusion

Anthony brings her conclusion back to her introduction, and the question of whether women are full citizens. She makes a pretty simple but very powerful logical point: women are people, and people are citizens, so women are citizens. How can anyone argue with something as easy to grasp as that?

Anthony simply follows that idea to its natural conclusion: since women are citizens, the State has no right to stop them from voting.

Speaking of conclusions, this concludes our analysis of Anthony's speech. Next up: yet another famous commencement speech.