Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth’s speech, “And Ain’t I a Woman?” is a very powerful and emotional speech. It is obvious that Sojourner was fired up when she made this speech. There is an obvious political message behind her speech, and that is the fact that women should be treated equally. Sojourner connects slavery with women’s writes by saying if she has to do the same work as a man, why can she not be given the same rights as a man. She says, “I have plowed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman?”(Truth 370) She has to do the same exact work a man (if not more as a slave) and she is treated more poorly then a slave man. Sojourner is making to point that if she works as hard as a man, eats as much as a man, and takes the punishment as well as a man, she should be able to have the freedoms of a man. More importantly she is trying to gain rights and freedoms for slave women. Truth says, “Nobody every helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or give me any best place! And ain’t I a woman?”(Truth 370) There is even more segregation between slave men and women. She is saying nobody ever helps her when she could use it. However white women are helped in almost everything they do. Sojourner is combining equality between black and white women, as well as equality between men and women.

Henry David Thoreau has a similar philosophy in his work “Civil Disobedience”. He writes, “Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of men?”(Thoreau 227) Here Thoreau is pushing towards the rights of all man kind, which is similar to Sojourner Truth pressing for change in women’s rights. They both want better treatment and more respect from their superiors.

Thoreau, D. Henry "Civil Disobedience." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 97-99. Print.

Truth, Sojourner. "And Ain’t I a Woman?" Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 97-99. Print.