Who Is Shaw's Opponents In The Anti-Suffrage Movement?
Anna Howard Shaw considers the right to vote as crucial as oxygen, and she aspires to let all people, including women, finally breathe. In the June of 1915, the United States is fighting World War One in Europe, while women, including Shaw, are fighting for suffrage rights at home (Auerbach). As the war rages on, women commit to their suffrage movements by giving speeches and marching in parades. On June 21, Shaw persuasively speaks to the people of New York at an equal suffrage campaign as they prepare to vote on a law concerning women’s suffrage rights. Her purpose is to give evidence to her listeners and persuade them to support the right to vote for the women of New York and eventually all of the women in America. Shaw uses “The Fundamental
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Because her cause was one that challenged the standards of society, the women’s suffrage movement saw great opposition in what they were working toward. However, these arguments were often not collected nor similar and were simply extreme points of view that would make the average American oppose them. Shaw claims that women suffragists are mocked as “socialists and anarchists”, but she does not understand “how a human can be both at the same time” (Shaw). Her opposition makes strong arguments against her, yet they serve no truth nor unity of ideas. “The beauty of it is they always answer their own arguments” (Shaw) by simply accusing the suffragists with any extreme title in society, even if they do not realize how contradictory they are. To clarify for her audience, she explains the admiration of democracy that she and her fellow suffragists share and the desire to maintain that adored democracy without changing the fundamental principle of their country to an anarchy. The women’s suffragist movement is not about taking control of the government and changing what the founding fathers worked so hard to build, but instead Shaw sagaciously tells “that it is the right of a human being to have a voice in government” (Shaw), and her movement only wishes to enhance America to its full and rightful potential. Everyone in a republic should have equal rights, and regardless of what her opponents claim about the suffragist movement, Shaw wants to inform the voters of New York that giving women the right to vote would only be logical and essentially crucial to enhance the status of their
Because her cause was one that challenged the standards of society, the women’s suffrage movement saw great opposition in what they were working toward. However, these arguments were often not collected nor similar and were simply extreme points of view that would make the average American oppose them. Shaw claims that women suffragists are mocked as “socialists and anarchists”, but she does not understand “how a human can be both at the same time” (Shaw). Her opposition makes strong arguments against her, yet they serve no truth nor unity of ideas. “The beauty of it is they always answer their own arguments” (Shaw) by simply accusing the suffragists with any extreme title in society, even if they do not realize how contradictory they are. To clarify for her audience, she explains the admiration of democracy that she and her fellow suffragists share and the desire to maintain that adored democracy without changing the fundamental principle of their country to an anarchy. The women’s suffragist movement is not about taking control of the government and changing what the founding fathers worked so hard to build, but instead Shaw sagaciously tells “that it is the right of a human being to have a voice in government” (Shaw), and her movement only wishes to enhance America to its full and rightful potential. Everyone in a republic should have equal rights, and regardless of what her opponents claim about the suffragist movement, Shaw wants to inform the voters of New York that giving women the right to vote would only be logical and essentially crucial to enhance the status of their