Hey this is Ben. Sorry I was unable to post about Wednesday's class last night so I will now...and yes, that post yesterday was someone from one of the other classes.
During Wednesday's class we talked about Elizabeth Cady Stanton's "Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions. Allison mentioned that this document (which was directly modelled after the Declaration of Independence) was "chock full of Englightenment values" such as man's "natural laws". A large part of the discussion centered around who we thought the intended audience was. Some argued that it was intended for a female (or the equivalent of "nationalistic") audience. They argued that the tone was too accusatory for it to be aimed towards a male audience and it was merely intended to spark action among the women (who presumably already agreed with Stanton's point of views). Others argued that it could only be intended for a male audience because if the women really wanted to get anything done after all, it would have to go through the goverment, which, at the time was all or almost all male.
Besides for the format in which it was written, it is also similar to the Declaration of Independence because both documents "simplify" the person they are accusing for propagandistic purposes. The D.O.I simplifies many people in Britian into simply "the king" so the colonists would have someone easy to point to as the cause of their troubles. In the D.O.S.R., the all inclusive "he" is used to make it seem like all males are guilty of the injustices Stanton mentioned although really it was obviosuly not 100% of them. The all inclusive "he" is a less accurate statement but a more effective propaganda tool.
It was also mentioned how Women's Rights movements always seem to get pushed out of the limelight any time a "bigger" issue like slavery or a World War comes up. After the D.O.S.R. was written in 1848, it was still over 70 years until women even got the basic right to vote!
Also, just a housekeeping note: All 100 notecards complete with subject headings and cross references are due next Tuesday.
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4 comments:
Hey, it's Erin.
The Declaration of Sentiments was not only modeled after the Declaration of Independence but also after the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Citizen, by Olympe de Gouges (as many fellow students in Euro know - or have blocked out. Written sometime during the French Revolution, it was modeled after the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and is full of many of the same "Enlightenment" values as the Declaration of Sentiments.
Both documents claim the natural equality of men and women, call for the "same share in the distribution of positions, employment, offices, honors and jobs", and argues for rights in property, to name a few. Some differences between them are obviously the time frame in which they were created and the fact that the Declaration of Sentiments is more accusatory (but that is because of the document it was modeled after). One thing is that is very different between them is their outcomes - the Declaration of Sentiments did not produce much change, but the Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citizen did see some level of equality established. Why are is that different, when they are very similar documents? Was it the environment they were created in, one more conducive to giving women rights than another?
Hey, it's Jasmine.
I think that the the Declaration of Sentiments and the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and citizen are similar in a sense - they are both based directly off prior documents, include Enlightenment ideals, and work towards equality for women. However, we can't overlook their differences. The documents that they are based off of - the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen address different issues.
The Decl. of Independence attacked Britain, while the Decl. of the Rights of Man listed the rights of French citizens. Thus, the Decl. of Sentiments has a more accusatory tone (like Erin said), while the Decl. of Rights of Woman merely includes women without attacking the male portion of society.
I'm not sure how much of an effect the Decl. of the Rights of Woman had on women's rights, but I do know that the author, Olympe de Gouges, was sent to the guillotine. Another thing I want to ask is, do you guys think that these 2 documents had less credibility because they were basically revisions of existing documents written by men? Do you think that this made them seem dependent on men?
Hey, it's Erin.
I think the fact that they basically copied the Declaration of Indepedence for their use made them less credible. Obviously, they had a point in mind when they did that (showing that the ideas in the declaration pertained to them also) but I think you could say that it lacked of originality. I know Arka said that by using the Declaration, they had a model of logic and showed that they could use it, but really they were just repeating another person's work, so it didn't really prove anything that way.
Hey, it's Jasmine.
I definitely agree with you, Erin. Even though the women who wrote the Decl. of Sentiments/Decl. of the Rights of Woman were obviously very smart, they lost some credibility by being copy-cats. I'm not sure what society's reaction was, but I'm guessing that some men used this as "evidence" that women couldn't think for themselves.
I also think that, by directly copying large chunks of the original documents, women couldn't express everything that they wanted to say. In a way, they limited themselves. I was looking online and I compared the original documents to the women's documents. They followed almost the exact same structure as the original documents - in the Declaration of the Rights of Woman, they added the word "woman" and a few specifics, but not much else. I think that if they wrote their own documents from scratch, they would've been able to create fresh, novel ideas.
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