The genesis of the women’s suffrage movement is historically associated with the refusal to seat female delegates at the World Anti-Slavery Society in 1840. Between 1848 and 1860 various states passed laws which gave women more rights, but as soon as the first shots of the Civil War were fired all progression came to a halt. Shortly after the war the push for suffrage became a crucial issue in the Era of Reconstruction. By examining Emma Goldman’s essay, Woman Suffrage and Thomas Jablonsky’s, Female Opposition a solid understanding of the weaknesses in the pro-suffrage movement can be substantiated.
To begin with, after the end of the Civil War the Women’s Suffrage movement suffered legal setbacks surrounding the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments forcing a political split in 1869. One of the largest reasons for early failure of the suffrage movement was that many women disagreed with its principles. “In 1868-1869 a proposal supporting woman suffrage was introduced to the Massachusetts state legislature. About 200 women countered this petition with a “remonstrance” urging their elected officials to resist any effort to force the ballot on the Commonweatlh’s female citizenry”(Jablonsky 119). Equally important and a paralleled strength to anti-suffrage were the males that dominated political office during the Gilded Age. “Because most male legislators in the United Sates during the nineteenth century did not believe in woman suffrage, the often tardy arrival of petitions opposing the vote did not harm the anti-suffrage position”(Jablonsky 120). Delayed voting and the boost from a patriarchal society only made the battle for woman suffrage an uphill climb.
In addition to how men viewed themselves in society during the Gilded Age, the issue of how men viewed women, and more specifically how women viewed themselves are vital to understanding the feebleness that existed within women’s suffrage at the time. Historically women in the United States were generally brought up and raised in a society that believed females were to stay in the home. “Yet woman clings tenaciously to the home, to the power that holds her bondage”(Goldman 196-197). This social cycle that continued for generations was arguably the largest hindering factor of the women’s suffrage movement strictly because it had gone on for generations. The other side of this social coin is how the male gender viewed the females culturally. “Since woman’s greatest misfortune has been that she was looked upon as either an angel or devil, her true salvation lies in being placed on earth; namely in being considered human, and therefore subject to all human follies and mistakes” (Goldman 198-199). In other words, the suffrage movement would not have been needed within a perfect world, but since this is not the case disagreements burdened the entire movement. “White and black women since the colonial era had formed organizations to provide charitable relief, but these associations multiplied during the Gilded Age as the industrializing cities filled with immigrants and rural Americans”(Cordery 116).
Ultimately, effective arguments against the women’s suffrage movement are easily able to point towards weaknesses in the movement itself due to the arrangement within society. Religious beliefs and gender perspectives only aided the establishment of the nature versus nurture phenomenon leading towards inequalities particularly within colonial America. In other words, because of society’s inequalities, barriers needed to be blasted down before any real progress could be gained.
Works Cited
Cordery, Stacy A. “Women in Industiralizing America .” The Gilded Age . Lanham : Rowman & Littlefiled Publishers , 2007. 121.
Goldman, Emma. Woman Suffrage. n.d.
Jablonsky, Thomas. Votes For Women. n.d.
