Lucy Stone uses Kairos to encourage Suffrage Movement

Lucy Stone (photo credit)

May 1, 1893

In her speech to the Congress of Women at the Chicago World’s Fair, it is difficult to overlook the importance that Lucy Stone places on time as a factor in the Women’s Suffrage Movement.

Stone places importance on time as a symbol of improvement. Kairos, the importance of time in rhetoric, is upheld throughout the address in a then-now emphasis on events throughout history.

Three different situations are referenced in a then-now representative of improvements over time:

1.       Women’s pursuit of education

2.       Women’s right to free speech

3.       Women in the workplace

Stone opens the speech by speaking on education and the strides that women have made in being able to become intelligent and educated.

“It shattered the idea, everywhere pervasive as the atmosphere, that women were incapable of education, and would be less womanly, less desirable in every way, if they had it,” Stone said about the establishment of women’s colleges. “However much it may have been resented, women accepted the idea of their intellectual inequality.”

This is the first of the arguments that over time and with persistence, opinions can be changed. While many women had accepted that they were less worthy of an education, others fought to provide opportunities and were successful.

Second, Stone briefly alludes to the success of women in the anti-slavery movement. Building ethos, she associates herself with the Grimke sisters and others who spoke out against slavery. She suggests that while many became outcasts, it was eventually accepted that women, too, had a right to speak their minds freely.

“The right to education and to free speech having been gained for woman, in the long run every other good thing was sure to be obtained,” Stone said.

This argument outlines hardships and public criticism toward women fighting for rights, and is the second instance of improvements being made over time.

Finally, Stone comes to the more recent struggle faced by women being criticized for going in to the work force. Listing success stories case by case, she argues that women have overcome obstacles of all kinds to achieve independence and respect in the workplace.

“In Massachusetts, where properly qualified ‘persons’ were allowed to practice law, the Supreme Court decided that a woman was not a ‘person,’ and a special act of the legislature had to be passed before Miss Lelia Robinson could be admitted to the bar,” Stone said. “But today women are lawyers.”

This marks the third clear argument that achievements are being made in equality.

Stone’s structure of time in this speech is important. While most of the rhetoric of the movement uses kairos in a more intense form, this piece subtly encourages patience. Many speakers of the movement emphasize immediacy and call for action, but this address calls out the strides that have been made with patience and persistence. Just at a time when the movement may be getting frustrated with the lack of major results, Stone effectively encourages persistence by putting great importance on the strides made over time.

Thanks to persistence, many states will receive suffrage before the 19th amendment in 1919. 

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