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The articles by DuBois and Earle cast important light on the development of the women’s feminist and suffrage movements of the nineteenth century. However, while both articles thoroughly explore unique aspects of these women’s movements, the arguments of these works are undoubtedly strengthened when read together.
Alone, DuBois is very effective in situating her story within the framework of existing historiography. While navigating the routes taken by earlier research into the nineteenth century feminist movement, DuBois crafts her research questions from what previous scholars had left unanswered, ultimately leading her to ask “why” the nineteenth century suffrage movement became the most radical among women. One of DuBois’s strongest arguments in answering this question stems from her interpretations of the public and private spheres; the public sphere emphasized the “individual” while the private sphere centered on “family” (64). Through these understandings – and the illustrations of women’s lives revolving around domestic responsibilities – DuBois is able to demonstrate why women were so often confined to the private sphere.
One topic presented by both DuBois and Earle that is made more lucid through the pairing of these articles is the rhetorical foundation upon which the feminist and suffrage movements began, or perhaps were at least made most effective. An interesting conclusion by Earle states that “the very key to white women’s own racial advancement was patriarchy” (227). In justifying this claim, Earle notes that nineteenth century women used “middle-class gender relations” to place themselves above minority groups like free people of color, immigrants, and slaves (227). While this argument may initially appear to weaken DuBois’s contention that suffragists of the nineteenth century sought to become individuals, separate from their husbands in the public sphere, I think when read in the correct context it bolsters DuBois’s claims. In the last portion of her article, DuBois discusses the strategies used by the suffragists and organizations like the WCTU and why some were more effective. The WCTU was so successful, she argues, because “took as its starting point woman’s position within the home,” a “home-based ideology” (69). If we consider Earle’s argument about patriarchy, it becomes clear that women’s groups like the WCTU had to use the model of patriarchy to convince other women that the foundations of family were being threatened. This led many women to become a part of movements because most women were “limited to the private realities of wifehood and motherhood” (DuBois 68). By initially appealing to problems at home and within the family, women’s movements were able to garner sufficient support for their causes and finally provoke change in the public sphere.
With this in mind I wholeheartedly agree with Max’s claims that failure would have been ineluctable for suffragists and abolitionists had they strived to “overturn all traditional values” (Feminist Radicalism). As Earle remarks, “to embrace abolitionism was an inherently radical act by itself” (226). For women to make sufficient progress in gaining the right to vote and entrance into the public sphere, they needed to, as Max says, “pick their battles.” This give and take between radicalism and appeals to patriarchy definitely developed a strategic paradox, but I believe, along with Earle, that perhaps this manipulation of social understandings was necessary for the success of the feminist and suffrage movements of the nineteenth century (229).