Women's Suffrage In America

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Women suffrage had its biggest impact in the early nineteen twenties, however not all women agreed with becoming suffragist as much as other women. Eric Foner notes in The Story of American Freedom.The women’s movement challenged the prevailing separation of public and private spheres, thereby pioneering the application of the idea of freedom. In “A Charming Equal Suffragist” written by Passie Fenton Ottley which is a newspaper article of Ottley interviewing a suffragist in Nashville Tn. The article asks questions referring to why she thinks that women should fight for suffrage and her reasoning behind it. Where as “Why I became an Anti- suffragist by Florence Goff Schwarz, was directed toward women’s anxieties as to why they were not becoming …show more content…

Schwarz is a business secretary of the Cincinnati Association Opposed to Women Suffrage. The article’s tone is more geared towards anti- suffrage and why women should be against it. According to the Schwarz, that women should not vote because women have no interest in it at all. In the article it states that women should not be forced into suffrage, “Force her in the political fields and will not she will not vote. She will not attend primaries; neither will she go to the polls. Never, in the entire history of suffrage states, has there been a single case on record where the majority of women have voted in any states.” This being one of the reason that suffrage is so slow that suffragist work “zealously” to bring in more women, by using the slogan “Suffrage is bound to come” Schwarz believes that suffrage will come when more women become more involved in politics. Because how are women suppose to be in the voting process if they are not even very interested in …show more content…

Ottley’s “A Charming Equal Suffragist” keeps the femininity in women who are part the the women’s rights movement and states that since women play multiple roles in the house that they can bring those qualities in to help in the voting process. It is also mentioned that the reason it has been such a slow process particularly in the Southern states is because the men already do everything for the women anyway. However, Schwarz’s article “Why I Became an Anti- Suffragist” argues that women should not join the women’s movement is because first, women are really not that interested in politics, that women should not be forced in to suffrage, and is just “fundamentally wrong” and goes against a women’s natural nature. These are the points that have caused women to question the future rights and receiving suffrage. So, overtime women’s suffrage was established it was a long process over a longer period of time. The reason being is because of the anxieties most women had about the suffrage movement. The anxieties are discussed in Ottley’s and Schwarz’s newpaper

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