Suffrage and Temperance in the Speeches of Frances Willard

Abstract

Although the Temperance Movement ultimately failed, it was an important step towards women's suffrage because it allowed women to gain political and public experience.

Nineteenth century women were still shackled under the chains of the system that believed women were secondary to men. They weren't allowed outside of the domestic sphere, and they certainly weren't allowed to take part in politics. Thus, when more and more men started coming home, inebriated and a danger to his family, women found it difficult to make the prohibition against alcohol possible because of the restrictions placed upon them. Frances Willard, president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, traveled far and wide and delivered many speeches, fighting hard for the cause of the Temperance Movement to ban alcohol. In these, she often combined the Women's Suffrage Movement, the movement for women's right to vote, and the Temperance Movement. These two movements are closely linked, and in this video I analyze Willard's speeches to see how she rhetorically connected them together.