Summary Of Women's Suffrage By Horace Bushnell

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Noor Syed Bushnell, Horace: Women’s Suffrage, 1869. New York: Scribner Horace Bushnell was a priest from Hartford Connecticut. In 1869, he published “Women’s Suffrage”, a book in which he offered his view on women being allowed to vote. He embedded rhetoric based on cultural norms, religion, science, and history into his argument. Bushnell’s stance was clear: women should not be allowed to vote. He incorporated several aspects of supposed differences in the sexes to prove that women could not vote justly and soundly. In his opinion, to attempt to justify or go against this natural fact would be trying to organize a reform against nature. Bushnell began his argument by identifying societal and cultural norms he thought everyone could agree …show more content…

He supported this claim by bringing religion into the argument. Because the author was sure that people held religion in high regard, Bushnell used his credibility as a priest to sway his audience. He stated that while Mary was subordinate to Joseph, she was in no way inferior. By finding common ground with those who are both religious, as well as those who believe that women are not inferior to men, Bushnell proceeded with his next point: women instinctively desire submission to the “manly nature”. This ties back to Bushnell’s original point: women taking a stand on something as monumental as voting for a leader requires faculties only present in the male sex. The essence of the author’s argument was that allowing women to attempt to make a decision which they were mentally incapable of was truly a reform against …show more content…

Although he did attempt to draw evidence from multiple sources, there were many holes in his argument. Firstly, Bushnell seemed to believe that his readers were at least partially already convinced of the claim he was trying to make. He stated phrases such as “as we all already know”, and “it is a widely-known fact”, when there were, in fact, men and women at the time whose views differed from his. This leads me to believe that the text might have been written for those who might have already been on the same page as the author, rather than to convince people who might disagree with Horace