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Beecher And Women's Rights

Decent Essays

Throughout American history, one conflict has been consistently fought for in hopes that there will one day be equality: the apparent gap between women’s rights and men’s. This topic emerged over the countless decades that women fought to try and gain equal representation. Although women had been struggling with gaining equal rights because of the dominance of white men, they did not allow their male “superiors” to extinguish their passion for change. If anything, men’s clear disagreement against allowing women their rights was something that drove and inspired women even more. In fact, many women, especially Angelina Grimke and Catherine E. Beecher, continuously wrote letters and contributed many years of hard work to prove that they are not …show more content…

Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Alice Paul, to name a few. One letter by Grimke to Beecher—The Sphere of Woman and Man as Moral Beings the Same—spoke of how women were equal to men by quoting paragraphs from a book, disputing them, and then stating her own opinions. One of Grimke’s quotes is about how man gains his superiority and following by instilling “a sense of shame, by fear and by personal interest” and drives by “physical force”. Although, Grimke disputes this quote saying that, if this were true of Jesus and if Jesus had told his disciples when he sent them out to preach the gospel, would they use fear, shame, and personal interest to get the result they want? Would they drive by physical force? No, Grimke doesn’t think so. Grimke’s overall point is that, if women are suppose to be “kindly, generous, peaceful and benevolent”, and men are suppose to “strike fear” and “use force”, that women are in fact the superior and men are the subordinate because Jesus says that, “moral power is immeasurably superior to 'physical …show more content…

Though in the beginning men believed women should not gain the right to vote or be independent because they were not competent enough, women proved this to be a myth. Angelina Grimke and Catherine E. Beecher especially fought for their equal rights through their letters until their voices were heard and listened to. It is because of their strong willpower and bravery that men and all American’s were able to see that God’s words were true and that the Constitution was not only for men. By reason of this, women no longer are seen as subordinate, inferior, or incapable. Grimke, Beecher, and many other valiant women made sure of this, and their determination is what helped to overall excell women’s rights and show men that they had no right or reason to think of women as inept or lesser. In the end, women’s hard work did not go unappreciated or unnoticed, especially by their male

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