Analysis Of Carrie Chapman Catt's Speech To Congress

Carrie Chapman Catt was an extraordinary woman and activist promoting the rights of women for their political freedoms. Moreover, Catt’s background as a teacher, superintendent of schools, and women’s activist gave credibility to her being a well-educated and refined woman, providing the ethos of her claim. (History.com) For this reason, she was more than capable of advocating for all women of our great country in the fight to allow women the right to a say in their government by giving them the right to vote. Catt argued in her speech to Congress in 1917 that “Woman suffrage was inevitable.” (qtd. in Edinmuller) Through applying ethos, presenting logos, and most importantly emphasizing pathos lead to the success of Catt’s impassioned speech to Congress. The …show more content…
Blame fear, anger, envy, hate or any other range of emotion that may apply to different people resisting change. However, Catt drove home her claim with several poignant, embarrassing, and shameful questions to her audience that addressed the disenfranchisement of women in our nation. For example, “Do you realize that when you ask women to take their cause to state referendum you compel them to do this: that you drive women of education, refinement, achievement, to beg men who cannot read for their political freedom?” (qtd. in Edinmuller) As well as, “Do you realize that such anomalies as a college president asking her janitor to give her a vote are overstraining the patience and driving women to desperations?” (qtd. in Edinmuller) Shaming the audience into seeing the inevitable and warning them of the consequences of their inactions provide the pathos hook needed to drive this claim home to her audience. Undeniably, Catt’s use of shame as her pathos is the strongest and most compelling stage of her