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Rhetorical Analysis Of Carrie Chapman Catt's Suffrage Speech

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Carrie Chapman Catt was one of the most profound leaders in the fight for women’s suffrage. Catt achieved the 19th Amendment in the early 1900s, this amendment allowed women to be involved in political elections including voting. To ensure the right for women to vote could be in full effect, she addressed the all-male Congress in a speech. In this speech, Catt uses emotional (pathos) and logical (logos) appeals to her audience, along with various examples of syntax (repetition) in the structure of her sentences. She also informs her audience of the sequential events that have led up to the fight for women’s suffrage. Catt explains the history of America’s democracy, political stand and goals through events and quotations of certain presidents. She states, “Abraham Lincoln welded those two axioms into a new one: ‘Ours is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.’”, she states another quote, “Fifty years more passed and the president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, in a mighty crisis of the nation, …show more content…

She additionally incorporates repetition in her sentences to support her purpose, by asking, “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?”, she asks another question, “Do you realize that such anomalies as a college president asking her janitor to give her a vote are overstraining patience and driving women to desperation?” Catt urges her audience to listen to her through these repetitive questions and make the Congress feel that a change must be made, she uses emotional diction to support her purpose of giving this message that women do not need to feel desperate for their

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