Are Women People? A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times

Alice Duer MillerProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.0
Word count
45K words
Chapters
5

Tags

English Originals Modern Poetry Political AllegoryCivic AwarenessSocial CritiqueHumor ReliefSatirical StyleFemale Perspective

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today. Are Women People? A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times by Alice Duer Miller. Author: Miller, Alice Duer, 1874-1942. Language: English. Class: JF: Political science: Political institutions and public administration. Release Date: Mar 1, 2004

Editor's review

This is Alice Duer Miller's rhyming pamphlet for the suffrage movement, using light, rhyming verse to satirize the arguments then deployed against women's suffrage. Its value lies in dismantling, with humor and irony, the logical gaps in public debate: brief yet sharply pointed, it is both a suffrage-era propaganda text and an accessible sample of the English satirical verse tradition. The Gutenberg electronic edition makes for quick reading and excerpting. As you read, note how the poems turn political positions into everyday dialogue and exaggerated scenes; suitable for classroom discussion or reading-group selections.

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Reading tips

  1. Read aloud in groups by theme to feel the rhythm and satirical tone of the verse.
  2. After each poem, briefly note the specific opposing argument it responds to.
  3. Combine with basic suffrage history to understand the text's polemical targets.
  4. Short poems can be selected to open reading-group discussions.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5

FAQ

Is this book a collection of essays or a poetry collection? It is a short collection of poems in verse centered on women's suffrage, responding to contemporary public debate through rhyme, irony, and exaggeration—not a systematic academic essay collection.
Do I need to know about the suffrage movement first? You needn't read monographs beforehand, but knowing the basic background of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Anglo-American struggle for women's voting rights makes it easier to grasp the poems' satirical targets and argumentative context.
Is it suitable for classroom use? Yes. The poems are short and rhythmically engaging, easy to read aloud and discuss in class, and can serve as supplementary material combining historical sources with literary work, though teachers should supply historical background.

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About the author

Alice Duer Miller Author · American · 1874–1942

Alice Duer Miller (1874–1942) was an American poet, novelist, and suffragist. Born on Staten Island, New York, and a graduate of Barnard College, she is best known for her 1915 book of satirical verse Are Women People?, which supported women's suffrage and gave the movement a phrase that became a popular slogan. Her writing spanned poetry and popular fiction, often addressing marriage, family, and social manners in a witty, briskly satirical style; several of her works, including Ladies Must Live and Manslaughter, were adapted into films. Seven of her works are included in this collection, commonly categorized under inspirational and personal growth.