Summary Of Crystal Eastman's Stand

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Victor Sanchez Professor Bean English 102 21 September 2016 Women’s Suffrage What makes someone feel superior to others? Throughout history there’s been cases of injustice in our society, and it is up to everyone whether or not they change. One upstander who did just that was Crystal Eastman. She fought for gender equality during the 20th century. Her argument was straight to the point and convincing through the use of the logical mode of persuasion in her essay “ Now We Can Begin”, to stand up for what she believed was right. It was an attempt to change the way women were seen at that time and end the oppression put upon them by men. Although the problems of this world are inevitable and their solutions may seem unattainable, …show more content…

Eastman’s stand is an opinion based one that is strengthen by her use of diction and her tone. Her diction helps back up her reason-loaded paragraphs. For instance, she says that “two business women can ‘make a home’ together without either one being over-burdened or over-bored”(Eastman 1). The phrase and words such as “make a home” and “business” set a strong and somewhat radical scene for the reader. By the use of the phrase “make a home” one would assume a man was needed to provide for the family for that time period, but not once in that quote was the word “man” used. Also, when she says “business”, the average person at that time would have related the word to that of the masculine form; however, that imagery is broken when the word “woman” follows it. Another factor to her advantage was the tone. Her tone is leading and straight to the point, sounding almost as if she were confident in not only her writing, but also herself. For example, she wrote and I quote, “ I can agree that women will never be great until they achieve a certain emotional freedom, a strong healthy egotism, and some un-personal sources of joy”. In this quote, Eastman is stating that if the society they live in is expecting women to act a certain way, they better be sure women are expecting some form of acknowledgement in return from their society. She sounds so assertive of her words that it makes the reader feel as though the fight for equality is certainly justified by reason. Thus, the word choice and the tone help set the mood to Eastman´s

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