Analysis: Now We Can Begin by Crystal Eastman
Savannah Raisor
Mrs. Van Orden
AP Language and Composition
29 September 2014
Now We Can Begin
Crystal Eastman was an American lawyer, antimilitarist, socialist, journalist, and most importantly, a feminist at the end of the women’s suffrage movements. Her words inspire the women of America. She breathed life into the Bill of Rights as a major leader in the suffrage and equal rights movements in the early twentieth century. Eastman displays several ideas that propel the ideology of not only the roles of women, and their independence in the work force, but also to the men and their role within the home. Through addressing women and their capacity to work alongside men, an impression of equality and identity is given to women.
Appealing to the idea that women are stuck behind a wall or barrier enforces, and extenuates the ideology that women were not getting the same rights that men are. Eastman clearly recognized that many women believed that August 23, 1920 was the day that everything would end, that the walls that stood high and strong between men and women would finally be broken down, and women, as a whole would at last receive the anxiously awaited rights they so clearly deserved. However, August 23 was just the beginning of a long line of problems that presented themselves. The beginning of the idea that men no longer reigned supreme, and that they could no longer dictate the thoughts and even further, the actions of women. The end of women’s suffrage was the keystone of the structure of the superiority of men being removed, now it is the responsibility of women to take down the rest of that structure that kept them at a seemingly implausible reach from the freedoms they deserved. Eastman allows American women to consider themselves to be a part of an army of working-class women that are marching to destroy every last morsel of prejudice that was once held against them. When this wall falls, however, the American men will long remember the wall that once
Mrs. Van Orden
AP Language and Composition
29 September 2014
Now We Can Begin
Crystal Eastman was an American lawyer, antimilitarist, socialist, journalist, and most importantly, a feminist at the end of the women’s suffrage movements. Her words inspire the women of America. She breathed life into the Bill of Rights as a major leader in the suffrage and equal rights movements in the early twentieth century. Eastman displays several ideas that propel the ideology of not only the roles of women, and their independence in the work force, but also to the men and their role within the home. Through addressing women and their capacity to work alongside men, an impression of equality and identity is given to women.
Appealing to the idea that women are stuck behind a wall or barrier enforces, and extenuates the ideology that women were not getting the same rights that men are. Eastman clearly recognized that many women believed that August 23, 1920 was the day that everything would end, that the walls that stood high and strong between men and women would finally be broken down, and women, as a whole would at last receive the anxiously awaited rights they so clearly deserved. However, August 23 was just the beginning of a long line of problems that presented themselves. The beginning of the idea that men no longer reigned supreme, and that they could no longer dictate the thoughts and even further, the actions of women. The end of women’s suffrage was the keystone of the structure of the superiority of men being removed, now it is the responsibility of women to take down the rest of that structure that kept them at a seemingly implausible reach from the freedoms they deserved. Eastman allows American women to consider themselves to be a part of an army of working-class women that are marching to destroy every last morsel of prejudice that was once held against them. When this wall falls, however, the American men will long remember the wall that once