Rhetorical Analysis Of Ain T I A Woman

Decent Essays
“Ain’t I a woman” by Sojourner Truth was published in 1851. Sojourner Truth had a tremendous impact on her audience; men; who didn’t believe women have the same rights and freedom in life as they do. Truth with her scornful and energetic tone made men realize that women have the same rights as men do. The concept of sharing personal experiences, using repetitive language, and making biblical references, made Sojourner Truth purpose’s clear and made her audience realize that women have rights. Truth’s main goal throughout her speech was to show how she and other women are equal to any man. A passage such as; “Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me!” (Paragraph 2) and many other good

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Women’s rights activist and abolitionist, Sojourner Truth, in her speech, “Ain’t I a Woman?” gives light to controversial issues surrounding the rights of women. Truth’s purpose is to emphasize how much she believes it to be ridiculous that a man can deny a woman certain rights when she is just as talented, if not more, than he. She adopts a powerful, matronly tone in order to efficiently instill her opinion on social issues in her activist listeners. Truth begins her speech by directly addressing her audience as “children” and speaking informally, as she would a close friend, setting the motherly tone that is consistent for the rest of the passage.…

    • 414 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Sojourner Truth was born into slavery, but she later became a leading activist for women’s rights and racial equality after being freed in 1827. She performed her famous “Ain’t I a Woman” speech at the 1851 Akron Ohio Women’s Convention. Today, multiple versions of this speech exist because the original was never officially recorded. Each of these interpretations manipulate the wording and presentation differently to alter the overall effect of the speech. Two of these interpretations by Cicely Tyson and Maya Angelou have similar purposes but are very different in how they are presented.…

    • 387 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Sojourner Truth was a strong woman. She was a strong woman because she took a stand and gave a speech about her opinion. When she gave this speech she became known for it. she was sold at the age of nine as a slave in a slavery auction.…

    • 259 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Give me liberty or give me death,” a phrase by Patrick Henry, Former Governor of Virginia, spoken during his speech at the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775. This very same phrase without a doubt, describes the passion and dynamic of a group of women who stopped at nothing to fight for American women’s right to vote. This phrase also used in the movie Iron Jawed Angels truly emulates the milestones lead women, such as Alice Paul women would take to end women’s suffrage. In the movie, Iron Jawed Angels through each roadblock members of the originally called, “Congressional Union” knew that if they had to fight as far as death for the chance of freedom they would without question.…

    • 1126 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As one can see in the speech given by Sojourner Truth in 1851, “Ain’t I a Woman”, she believes that women’s right and, even more specifically, African American women’s right are extremely important. In her speech presented in Akron, Ohio, she takes numerous points of her opponents and finds counterclaims to rebut them. She uses points such as how she has been treated compared to how other women have been treated, the lack of intelligence the men assume she has, and she even poses the question of where Christ came from to rebut one of their points. While addressing these topics she uses a very clever strategy, of taking the arguments against her, to make the point of how they would are irrelevant. As the reader can see, Truth makes excellent points in her speech, “Ain’t I a Woman”, to make her point clear.…

    • 789 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    G.D. Anderson once said that "Feminism isn't about making women strong. Women are already strong. It's about changing the way the world perceives that strength." Although America has come a long way in its fight for everyone to have equal civil rights, there is still a long way to go. Through Susan B. Anthony’s legacy and a poem by Sojourner Truth, it is evident that because women aren’t given the same treatment as men, they have similar issues that African Americans had with slavery and the fact that they aren’t seen as people in the same sense that was mentioned in the Constitution, the civil liberty issues of the American past have not been resolved.…

    • 762 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Women didn’t had any rights whatsoever unlike men who had the right of freedom of speech, the right to vote and freedom of press but the women got nothing in return not even being able to work and no in the modern day women are still struggling to get pay the same wage men and women of color are fighting towards getting pay the same wage as white women do in America. It was Sojourner Truth, a free slave women who didn’t gained her freedom after the emancipation that demanded for women to be able to work since they were view as fragile being that only serve for them to be at home, in the passage on the book, in page 482 it talks about how in one of her speeches she flexed her arm to showed her muscle right after she talked about her hard labor days and asked, “am I not strong enough?’ I don’t think this has changed, since women and girls are put down for being the weak gender, for not supposedly being able to do what men do now, but back then due to the brave women who stood up for their beliefs and their right to become someone they wanted to become now girls are growing up thinking that kicking like a girl is possibly the best compliment they could ever get as well as kicking a ball from the far end field in the final of the Women’s world cup. The main…

    • 1915 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    White Women and the Abolitionist Movement “Women struggled to enter the all –male professional schools. Harriet Hunt, a women physician who began to practice in 1835, was twice refused admission to Harvard Medical School.” For the longest time, women struggled to find their place in society due to enduring gender discrimination. Women experienced being treated unfairly and were expected to hold numerous culture expectations such as pursuing low-grade job professions. White women felt they could empathize with the African American people undergoing slavery, especially black women.…

    • 524 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In both "Ain't I a Woman" by Sojourner Truth and the letters of Abigail Adams, the authors use evidence of the oppression of women in their daily lives to advocate for equality between men and women. In her speech, Truth points out the characteristics that she shares with men when she says that she could eat and work "as much as a man" (Truth). She argues that women are not inferior to men, so they deserve to be compensated with the same manner that men are rewarded. She supports her argument by using her experiences, which are similar to that of a man's, to emphasize the fact that the disparity between men and women is unfair since women are equally as devoted as men are. She urges the audience to look at the hardships that she experienced,…

    • 723 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Sojourner Truth fights for women's rights and freedom of speech. Sojourner Truth talked about how men to act proper to white women ,but isn’t she a women. This conference and that she goes to helps men see how black americans feel about not being treated with rights. Sojourner Truth really speeks out to the women’s confrence to the men in front and she saying all this while the Civil War is going on. Because if she went on to the stage and talks in regard to how she is treated she would be whipped,died or something.…

    • 280 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Sojourner Truth Speech

    • 374 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Sojourner Truth gave her speech to address her views on women's rights and advocate equal rights of men and women everywhere. 2. The social conversations address the rights of African American women and how they should be the same as men. 3.The purpose of her speech is also the same as her motivation.…

    • 374 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Wollstonecraft argues many things throughout this story. She feels that women are uneducated and are not being educated as equally as men are and neglected in society. Wollstonecraft, contends that women should have an instruction that is comparable with their position in the public area and afterward continues to rethink that position, asserting that women are the key to the country since they’re the ones who care for their children. In addition, they could be ‘companions’ to their husbands rather than simple wives. Throughout the passage.…

    • 750 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Look at my arm” she said “I have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me — ar’n’t I a woman? The message she repeated was that women were equals to men, because she was a former slave who did the same amount of work as a male. Truth often reminded…

    • 835 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Feminist Theory began as early as the 18th Century in response to women’s issues and discrimination against women during that time. The Feminist Theory succinctly focused on the inequality of women in a society where women had limited rights. To some degree, the idea of women being authoritative figures, having an identity as an individual, being political, or even having any knowledge or understandings of the world were very limited based on their gender. The Feminist theory addressed the way women were treated and perceived based on the mindset of men in those times. Sojourner Truth, one of the first feminist of the time, addressed the movement with her belief that women could perform the same tasks as men.…

    • 1092 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    From the Women’s Rights Movement, to today’s college campuses, women have been expressing their feelings towards the issue of sexism through writing. Sexism has left women feeling weak, unimportant, and worthless. However, writers have managed to use their craft to call out the sexist acts around them and bring awareness to the tough topic. Today, women continue to speak out against sexism, trying to finish the work of those that came before them. 1851, Sojourner Truth delivered a passionate speech titled, “Ain’t I a Woman?”, that possessed a message of sexism.…

    • 863 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays