National Woman Suffrage Association Reading Reaction

After reading the "Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States" I was most intrigued with the closing paragraph. The closing paragraph of this piece began with the sentence, "We ask of our rulers, at this hour, no special favors, no special privileges, no special legislation." I appreciated this sentence because the title "our rulers" does not seem to imply the government of our nation. Instead I feel as though the women writing this piece meant all the men "above" them. I think that the women were using "our rulers" in a sarcastic way to strengthen their point that women deserve to be granted the same rights that men in the country receive.

I also found the article intriguing for the descriptive way women symbolized men. In the article the authors did not always use the term male and men, instead the authors found other ways to strengthen their points. In one part of the article the authors talked about the fact that women were not given the opportunity to go to universities and law schools, the authors then stated that sons of China, Japan and Africa are welcomed there. And when discussing the aristocracies of the world, stated that the son was above the mother who bore him. The authors used these ways to describe men to deliver there points in a manner that was more moving to the reader.

This piece discussed the contradictions of the Constitution towards women. The women writing this declaration went through each aspect of the Constitution which afforded women rights that they were not receiving. The strongest of those points being that women are not given the right to vote. Our country amended the Constitution to make all people citizens, allowing blacks to vote. When the Constitution was amended they decided that women, though citizens, did not deserve the right to vote.

Women at that time were not given the right to vote, yet were expected to cooperate with ever aspect of the government. Women were expected to pay their taxes, despite one our nations reasons for leaving England being "no taxation without representation". In most states a women's property and earnings were owned by her husband.

I feel as though this article was similar to Douglass' article, however, I felt as though Douglass' was more powerful. First of all Douglass concentrated on the accomplishments of the nation much more than this article did. This article quickly gave praise to the nation and then went on about each aspect where the Constitution was not working properly for women. Douglass seemed to be more powerful in his words inciting action. This article read more like a petition asking these items to be considered.