Inequality In Emma Goldman's Regime

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"The truth is, women may not vote, they may not love whom they want, they may not develop their minds and their spirits, they may not commit their lives to the spiritual adventure of life, comrades they may not! And why? Is our genius only in our wombs? Can we not write books and create learned scholarship and perform music and provide philosophical models for the betterment of mankind? Must our fate always be physical?" (Doctorow, 70) The issue about women's rights has always been a social problem throughout the history. In Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow uses the 1900s' time period as the historical background to present the life of women when there were mostly oppressions and only a few changes happened. Doctorow uses the life of women from different …show more content…

Emma Goldman has the ability to realize how women are treated in the unfair society and question the people and the society, which is something that none of the other female characters are able to do. Goldman not only holds speeches about her thoughts, but also points out the sadness of Evelyn Nesbit by saying that "because like all whores you value propriety. You are creature of capitalism, the ethics of which are so totally corrupt and hypocritical that your beauty is no more than the beauty of gold, which is to say false and cold and useless" (Doctorow, 74). Even though Goldman criticizes Evelyn by claiming that "you accepted the conditions in which you found yourself and you triumphed. But what kind of victory has it been?" (Doctorow, 73), she still helps Evelyn to understand her situation and shares her personal connection with Evelyn. It is critical to know the importance of Doctorow creating a female character like Emma Goldman that despite the fact that most women did not realize the inequality in the society, some women like Goldman started to develop the movement of feminism and raising the problem to a larger scale to be