Ethos And Pathos In Margaret Sanger's Speech

In her pilgrimage to fight for women’s rights, activist Margaret Sanger created a speech on a severely controversial topic not only during her time period, but during our present time period as well. While many firmly disagreed with her and still do, she did bring to light a major disparity between sexes and social classes. By vocalizing her qualms with the rights of women, mainly in the middle and lower classes, to decide for themselves if they wish to have children or not. By voicing her opinions in an extremely misogynistic era she made herself a totem in women’s history. Women do have a right to decide for themselves if they wish to have children or not. In this essay I will be touching on the rhetorical devices, Ethos and Pathos.

The rhetor

In the beginning she talks about how throughout the centuries women have been slaves to men’s desires and philosophies. She evens relates men’s hold of women as the “shackles of slavery”.

“We now know that there never can be a free humanity until woman is freed from ignorance, and we know, too, that woman can never call herself free until she is mistress of her own body. Just so long as man dictates and controls the standards of sex morality, just so long will man control the world” (pg.2).

In this quote Sanger relates the the subjugation of women to the bondage of the freedom of humanity. She relates to the male audience by speaking of a Father and Husband who was a sober, hard working gentleman, who turned into an alcoholic when five more children were added to the family. She shows the importance of birth control not only for the health of the woman, but also the future of the child/children and father. She uses pathos to emotionally connect to the hardships faced by men in low and middle class families who cannot support their families due to to big of a

The father, who was once straightlaced and hardworking, but had now turned into a drunk, and only two of the eleven children had any hope in life. She uses this as an example of what overpopulation can do to a family and the importance of birth control. This quote, displaying the lives of torn families, is an example of Pathos. Pathos is illustrated in this quote through the sadness and disparity that the people in the stories face and the dark future that they have.

Sanger uses metaphors as her main rhetorical device. For example when she talks about the hardships that women have faced through the centuries,

“Throughout the ages, every attempt woman has made to strike off the shackles of slavery has been met with the argument that such an act would result in the downfall of her morality” (Paragraph.1).

In this example she uses “shackles of slavery” to define the hold men have had on women’s freedom to think and speak up for themselves. She also uses repetition, an example, the use of the word women throughout the speech. Examples of how she uses these two words