Reflection- "And Ain't I Woman?"

For  this reflection, we were supposed to read the poem "And Ain't I a Woman?" by Sojourner Truth.  I enjoyed reading this poem so much for many reasons.  The first reason of why I liked this poem so much was because she made so many good points.  Her story is told from the point of view of the slaves, so it is obviously during the Civil War and late eighteenth century.  During this time, the white men--particularly upper class, or high middle class--had a very specific way of treating the white, upper class women.  They were thought of to be very delicate and proper.  Sojourner Truth talks about how "a woman needs to be helped into a carriage/and lifted over ditches."  One of my favorite movies of all time is Gone With the Wind, which portrays this perfectly.  The women were thought to have to eat extremely lightly, be very sensitive to the sun, and to have the smallest waste in the country.  This is mostly for women in the South; I am not so sure about the women in the north.  At this time in our history, this was very normal and every woman was supposed to enjoy this and look forward to it once they were adults.  Soujourner Truth is asking why she, a woman, was denied the right to actually be treated like one.  This can relate to the philosophies of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson because neither men wanted slavery.  Soujourner Truth also did not slavery because it was so unfair and she was being denied of her rights.  The similarity is the extreme dislike of slavery.  Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau believed that slavery was unfair from the point of view from a white man, which does not speak as loud as the point of view from Soujourner Truth because she actually had to go through it.  They did not like the taxes that slavery caused, so I guess it is not really the exact same concept.



"Sojourner Truth's Aint I a Woman Speech!" Women Writers: A Zine. Web. 13 Feb. 2012.