Summary Of Ain T I A Woman By Sojourner Truth

“Ain’t I a Woman” by Sojourner Truth and “I Want a Wife” by Judy Brady are both popular feminist essays by a historical and modern feminist, respectively. In “Ain’t I a Woman”, Sojourner Truth describes her own strengths and repeats the phrase “ain’t I a woman” to imply that these strengths ring true for all women in order to call attention to the power of a woman and women. In “I Want a Wife”, Judy Brady describes the way men view their own wives by satirically describing the type of wife she wants. Brady repeatedly uses the word “wife” which is important because that word puts a woman’s relationship to her spouse over her identity as an individual. Both essays focus on how men view women, specifically, how men view women as inferior.

A major focus of both “I Want a Wife” and “Ain’t I a Woman” is motherhood. Traditionally, women who are mothers are expected to put their motherhood above all else.

In “Ain’t I a Woman”, Truth describes how men think women are incapable and says “That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere.” but asserts that these things should not be done out of pity for the perceived incapability of women, but out of respect: “Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I could have ploughed and planted, gathered into barns, and no man could head me.” The main focus of Brady’s “I Want a Wife” is how men treat women as inferior. The speaker, who fulfills the traditional roles of a man in a heterosexual marriage, describes the wife they want as wholly subservient to the speaker in every aspect of her marriage. The speaker of this essay expects the wife to fulfill all domestic duties without question or complaint, and attend to her husband’s every want over her own