Speech: Ain’t I A Woman? Delivered by Sojourner Truth at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851
Where I got it: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/sojtruth-woman.asp
While Sojourner Truth uses all three persuasive strategies of pathos, logos and ethos in her famous speech, ethos is arguably the strategy she leans upon most heavily. She describes her painful experiences as a slave, working in the field, suffering under the lash of the whip, bearing thirteen children and seeing most of them sold off- and yet remaining a woman. Her experiences clash with one of the former speakers’ claims that women are fragile and helpless, as Truth seems to have done and endured more than many men could ever even think about, in addition to having no one to share her sorrow with. Truth uses logos when talking about the intellect of men and women, using the analogy of a quart and a pint. If women indeed have pint-sized intellects, Truth asserts, they should at least have their “little half measure full”, that they should be educated and allowed the choice to vote. Also, when Truth refers to the story of Adam and Eve, she reasons with the audience that if Eve was “strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone”, probably referring to Eve’s consumption of the forbidden fruit and subsequent banishment from paradise, women are also strong enough to make the world right again. The context of the speech plays a large role as well, as people thought the Bible was the ultimate truth. Truth responds by interpreting well-known stories from the Bible with a fresh twist to support her stance for women and slaves’ rights. She disagrees with a man who claims that women cannot have the same rights as men because Christ was not a woman, asking him repetitively, “Where did your Christ come from?” As Christ came from God and Mary, a woman, Truth seems to tell the audience that without a woman, Christ would not have been born and therefore women also play a crucial role in this world. Her passionate, heart-wrenching repetition of “And ain’t I a woman?” is one of the best-known parts of Truth’s speech, and also what I thought made this speech so persuasive in appealing to the audience’s emotions.
Your post does a lot in a little space! I'm especially intrigued by your discussion of Truth's use of her own story of being a slave to establish her ethos--we tend to think of slaves as helpless/powerless, and so it's interesting that Truth turns it into a story of power. You've smartly picked up on a pattern in Truth--her use of stories that should demonstrate women's incapacity to argue for women's rights. The reinterpretation of biblical stories is an especially important tactic in the nineteenth century for women arguing for their rights, and you have done a great job of pointing out how Truth manages to do that (and more!) in such a short speech.
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