Truth on Womanhood: The Effectiveness of the Individual Story

What makes a woman a woman? Is it her strong will, or maybe her ability to create new life? Or, is it simply that a woman is a woman regardless of age or race who should have the same rights as a man because she is a human being? These questions, raised by Sojourner Truth in her speech Ain’t I a woman? made her short speech at a women’s rights convention in 1851 a very powerful speech, indeed. The use of the repeated question paired with Truth’s first hand experiences and her use of irrefutable biblical references make her argument stick with her listener.

            The question she repeatedly asks is “Ain’t I a woman?” this is a powerful question to ask because the only answer is yes. She traps her listener this way, so that when she continues to list the reasons that she personally deserves respect and equal rights, her listener is forced to think of her and see her the way she sees herself, “I have ploughed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman?” She establishes herself quickly as an expert on women’s rights when she talks about a man’s view of women as frail and weak refuting the idea that “women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches,” through her own experiences and repeatedly asking her audience “ain’t I a woman?” The last thing she does is reference the bible. This is very important because as this was a speech her audience could have been illiterate, or less educated than herself, so by referencing the bible, and not just any story but the creation story of Adam and Eve and Jesus’ birth she ensures that not only will everyone in the room be familiar with the stories, but that her points will resonate fully which each individual. At the very end by thanking her audience for listening she makes listening their choice and changes the entire tone of her speech from impassioned and angered to informative and somewhat nonchalant. This leaves the audience reflecting on their own emotions instead of trying to make sense of hers, which will allow the audience to form their own opinions about the subject.

            By offering many proofs that she is a woman and that she has worked as hard as any man, Truth leaves no room for logical rebuttal. The types of reasons she uses to support her argument have a lot of bearing on how easily someone could rebut it. She does not cite some statistic about the number of workingwomen in 1851 rather, she tells her own story, and because she is the only expert on her own life no one could possibly prove her wrong. The same can be said about the biblical stories she cites. No one can rebut the use of such universally accepted tales, so by relating them to her own argument she proves it’s integrity.