What She Said

Part I, Case 4: Suffrage in American Culture

As women and men in the suffrage movement worked to advance their cause, opinions around issues associated with women's rights were gradually normalized as a part of our national discourse and American public life. Many suffrage organizations, in working to raise funds in support of the cause, created and sold cookbooks and other publications targeted at women. By purchasing such a cookbook, women across America who did not have the time or other resources to devote to the cause due to obligations in the home could provide financial support for their local woman suffrage organization.

Works of fiction written during this time that glamorized the work of suffragettes, or that speculatively featured women in roles then considered unthinkable, were also quite popular. Written by both men and women, characters in these books often explored common pro- and anti-suffrage arguments. The debate even entered theaters across the US as playwrights used it to propel their plots, and in some instances take advantage of the more absurd arguments to make their audiences laugh.

Satirical works that ridicule and mock their subjects, existed in print and other forms, as in the case of the handkerchief displayed here. Probably produced in 1880, it speculates that traditional roles filled by men and women in society will be totally swapped by 1980, with women humorously depicted as they engage in work that was then exclusively the domain of men, as police officers, judges, scientists, and more, while men do laundry, prepare tea, and care for children.

Case 5, Women Win the Vote, is to your right on the east wall of the gallery.

• 1

  Feelix Feeler (Rev. L. E. Keith, A.M.) Female=Filosofy: Fished Out and Fried. Cleona, PA: G. Holzapfel, 1894. JK 1901 K28 1894

• 2

  M. M. Packard. Uncle Jake on Woman Suffrage: A Satire. West Cumminton, MA: William G. Atkins, 1889. JK 1896 P25 1889

• 3

  Washington Women's Cook Book. Seattle: Washington Equal Suffrage Association, 1909. TX 715 W37 1909

• 4

  Helen M. Winslow. A Woman for Mayor: A Novel of To-Day. Chicago: The Reilly & Britton Co., 1909. PS 3545 I755 W66 1909

• 5

  Isaac N. Stevens. An American Suffragette: A Novel. New York: William Rickey & Co., 1911. PS 3537 T4715 A75 1911

• 6

  Suffrage Handkerchief, circa 1880 Women's Suffrage Collection