The document provides an overview of a project analyzing speeches from Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1892 and Shirley Chisholm in 1969 advocating for women's rights. It summarizes the historical contexts and challenges women faced in each time period. A textual analysis is presented comparing the rhetorical strategies of each speaker, including how they establish persona and convey their message. Both speeches aim to promote changes in attitudes towards women's rights and reflect the ongoing struggle for social progress.

1. Sampling the Evolution of
Women’s Rights Rhetoric
Sarah Klebba

2. Overview
• 1892 – Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Solitude of Self” speech
• 1969 – Shirley Chisholm, “Equal Rights for Women” speech
• Historical context
– What social conditions are the same and different?
• Textual analysis
– How comparable and contrasting is the rhetoric of these
women’s rights advocates from different time periods?
• The speeches
– Promote change in attitudes towards women’s rights
– Reflect the struggles for social progress that women
experienced between 1892 and 1969

3. Meet Stanton
• Born 1815
• Father: wealthy judge
• College educated
• Pioneer of the women’s suffrage
movement in the 1800s
• Advocated for:
• Right for women to vote
• Divorce law reform
• Abolition of slavery
• African-American rights

4. Meet Chisholm
• Born 1924
• Parents: immigrants from Barbados
• College educated
• School teacher
• First African American
Congresswoman
– Constituents:
poor, black, uneducated
• First African American woman to
run for President (1972)
• 2nd wave feminist

5. Challenges that Women Faced – 1800s
• Women relegated to domestic sphere
– Pressure to raise a family
• Couldn’t
– Vote
– Work outside the home
– Participate in politics
– Attend college
– Own land
• Restricted by social conventions that
expected propriety

6. Challenges that Women Faced – 1960s
• Could
– Vote
– Own land
– Attend college
– Work outside the home
• Restricted by social conventions
– Limited opportunities for
women outside of domestic
sphere
– Women are not taken
seriously outside of domestic
roles

7. Textual Analysis – Speaker Strategies
• Stanton
– Instrumentality through alignment of ideals
• Encourages accountability
• Moral reminder
“The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion
is the individuality of each human soul; our Protestant idea, the
right of individual conscience and judgment; our republican
idea, individual citizenship.” (para. 1)

8. Textual Analysis – Speaker Strategies, cont.
• Chisholm
– Instrumentality through shock tactics
• Illustrative reasoning
“Prejudice against blacks is becoming unacceptable although
it will take years to eliminate it. But it is doomed because,
slowly, white America is beginning to admit that it exists.
Prejudice against women is still acceptable. There is very
little understanding yet of the immorality involved in double
pay scales and the classification of most of the better jobs as
‘for men only.’” (para. 6)

9. Textual Analysis – Speaker Persona
• Stanton
– First persona (adopted role) – expert
• Interpretive visual metaphors
“In ignorance, poverty and vice, as a pauper or criminal, alone we starve
or steal; alone we suffer the sneers and rebuffs of our fellows; alone we are
hunted and hounded through dark courts and alleys, in byways and
highways; alone we stand in the judgment seat; alone in the prison cell we
lament our crimes and misfortunes; alone we expiate them on the gallows.
In hours like these we realize the awful solitude of individual life…
Seeing, then, that life must ever be a march and a battle, that each soldier
must be equipped for his own protection, it is the height of cruelty to rob
the individual of a single natural right.” (para. 12)

10. • Chisholm
– First persona (adopted role) – expert
• Statistical evidence
“More than half of the population of the United States is female. But
women occupy only 2 percent of the managerial positions. They have not
even reached the level of tokenism yet. No women sit on the AFL-CIO
council or Supreme Court. There have been only 2 women who have held
cabinet rank, and at present there are none. Only 2 women now hold
ambassadorial rank in the diplomatic corps. In Congress, we are down to 1
Senator and 10 Representatives. Considering that there are about 3 1/2
million more women in the United States than men, this situation is
outrageous.” (para. 7)
Textual Analysis – Speaker Persona, cont.

11. Textual Analysis – Speaker Persona, cont.
• Stanton
– Second persona (ideal audience)
• Not immediate audience (legislators)
• Fellow suffragettes
“To guide our own craft, we must be captain, pilot, engineer;
with chart and compass to stand at the wheel; to watch the
winds and waves, and know when to take in the sail, and to
read the signs in the firmament over all.” (para. 7)
“We ask for the complete development of every individual,
first, for his own benefit and happiness.” (para. 9)

12. Textual Analysis – Speaker Persona, cont.
• Chisholm
– Second persona (ideal audience)
• Is immediate audience: legislators
“It is true that part of the problem has been that women have not
been aggressive in demanding their rights. This was also true of
the black population for many years. They submitted to
oppression and even cooperated with it. Women have done the
same thing. But now there is an awareness of this situation
particularly among the younger segment of the population.”
(para. 9)

13. Textual Analysis – Speaker Persona, cont.
• Stanton
– Third persona (excluded audience)
• African American women
“And yet, there is a solitude which each and every one of us
has always carried with him, more inaccessible than the ice-
cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea; the
solitude of self. Our inner being which we call ourself, no eye
nor touch of man or angel has ever pierced. It is more hidden
than the caves of the gnome; the sacred adytum of the oracle;
the hidden chamber of Eleusinian mystery, for to it only
Omniscience is permitted to enter.” (para. 31)

14. Textual Analysis – Modern Connotations
• Stanton
– Heroic pioneer of women’s movement
• Chisholm:
– Ran for President in 1972
• Primarily remembered for
– But not widely
– Insistence that she experienced more
prejudice in politics because she was a
woman than because she was black

15. Conclusion
• Both speeches are instrumental
– Work to promote changes in attitudes towards women’s
rights
• Variety of strategies
– Create moral and logical tones
– Promote expertise
– Convince us that change is necessary and possible
– Show us who is left out
• Who do we remember?
• Stanton and Chisholm supplement each other
– “Fill in the gaps”
• Reflect social progress
– Exigence of second wave feminist movement to move
toward gender equality

16. References
Brown, T.L. (2008). “A new era in American politics”: Shirley Chisholm and the discourse of identity. Callaloo,
31(4), 1013- 1025. doi: 10.1353/cal.0.0258
Campbell, K.K., Huxman, S.S., & Burkholder, T.R. (2015). The rhetorical act: Thinking, speaking and writing
critically (5th ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.
Chisholm, S. (1969, May 21). Equal rights for women. Retrieved from
library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/wlmpc_wlmms01015/.
Chisholm, S. (1973). The good fight. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.
DuBois, E.C. (Ed.) (1992). The Elizabeth Cady Stanton-Susan B. Anthony reader: Correspondence, writings,
speeches. (Rev. ed). Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.
Engbers, S.K. (2007). With great sympathy: Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s innovative appeals to emotion. Rhetoric Society
Quarterly, 37(3), 307-332. doi: 10.1080/02773940601039371
Fisher, A.A. (2008) The rhetoric of women who run. The Review of Communication, 8(1), 56-59, doi:
10.1080/15358590701586519
Rampton, M. (2015, October 25). Four waves of feminism. Retrieved from https://www.pacificu.edu/
Rogers, D. (2016). Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902). In Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved
from http://www.iep.utm.edu
Stanton, E.C., Anthony, S.B., & Gage, M.J. (Eds.) (1881). History of woman suffrage (Vols. 1, 4). (2nd ed.).
Rochester, NY: Susan B. Anthony. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/
Stanton, E.C. (1892, January 23). The solitude of self. Retrieved from
www.elizabethcadystantonhometown.org/speeches.html.
Stanton, E.C. (1969). Elizabeth Cady Stanton: As revealed in her letters, diary and reminiscences (T. Stanton
& H.S. Blatch, Eds.) (Vol. 1). New York, NY: Arno Press. (Original work published in 1922)
Stanton, E.C., & Anthony, S.B. (1997). The selected papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
(A.D. Gordon, Ed.). Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Tell, D. (2010). Stanton’s “Solitude of Self” as public confession. Communication Studies, 61(2), 172-183. doi:
10.1080/10510971003603929
Winslow, B. (2014). Shirley Chisholm: Catalyst for change. (C. Berkin, Ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

17. Contact Information
Sarah Klebba
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Klebb007@umn.edu

18. Questions?