Within the field of rhetoric, the contributions of female rhetoricians have often been overlooked. Anthologies comprising the history of rhetoric or rhetoricians often leave the impression there were none. Throughout history, however, there have been a significant number of women rhetoricians.
Contents
- Aspasia c 410 BC
- Diotima 4th century BC
- Julian of Norwich 1343 1415
- Catherine of Siena 1347 1380
- Christine de Pizan 1365 1430
- Margery Kempe 1373 1439
- Laura Cereta 1469 1499
- Margaret Fell 1614 1702
- Margaret Cavendish c 1623 1673
- Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz 1651 1695
- Mary Astell 1668 1731
- Mary Wollstonecraft 1759 1797
- Susan B Anthony 1820 1906
- Anna Julia Cooper 1858 1964
- Kate Chopin 1850 1904
- Margaret Fuller 1810 1850
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1860 1935
- Sarah Grimke 1792 1873
- Frances Harper 1825 1911
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1815 1902
- Maria W Stewart1803 1879
- Sojourner Truth 1797 1883
- Ida B Wells 1862 1931
- Fannie Barrier Williams 1855 1944
- Sarah Winnemucca 1841 1891
- Gertrude Buck 1871 1922
- Mary Augusta Jordan 1855 1941
- Margaret Sanger 1879 1966
- Emma Goldman 1869 1940
- Alice Dunbar Nelson 1875 1935
- Dorothy Day 1897 1980
- Virginia Woolf 1882 1941
- Zora Neale Hurston 1891 1960
- Simone de Beauvoir 1908 1986
- Rachel Carson 1907 1964
- Adrienne Rich 1929
- Helene Cixous 1937
- Julia Kristeva 1941
- Audre Lorde 1934 1992
- Merle Woo 1941
- Alice Walker 1944
- Evelyn Fox Keller 1936
- Andrea Dworkin 1946 2005
- Paula Gunn Allen 1939
- Gloria Anzaldua 1942 2004
- June Jordan 1936 2002
- bell hooks 1952
- Nancy Mairs 1964
- Terry Tempest Williams 1955
- Minnie Bruce Pratt 1946
- Dorothy Allison 1949
- Nomy Lamm 1976
- Leslie Marmon Silko 1948
- Ruth Behar 1962
- Gloria Steinem 1934
- References
Re∙Vision—the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction—is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. -Adrienne Rich
The following is a timeline of contributions made to the field of rhetoric by women.
Aspasia (c. 410 BC)
Aspasia was a Milesian woman who was known and highly regarded for her teaching of political theory and rhetoric. She is mentioned in Plato's Memexenus, and is often credited with teaching the Socratic method to Socrates.
Diotima (4th century BC)
Diotima of Mantinea is an important character in Plato's Symposium. It is uncertain if she was a real person or perhaps a character modelled after Aspasia, for whom Plato had much respect.
Julian of Norwich (1343-1415)
Julian of Norwich was an English mystic who challenged the teachings of medieval Christianity in regard to women's inferior role in religion.
Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)
Catherine of Siena was an Italian who was influential through her writings to men and women in authority, where she begged for peace in Italy and for the return of the papacy to Rome. She was canonized in 1461 by Pope Pius II.
Christine de Pizan (1365-1430)
Christine de Pizan was a Venetian who moved to France at an early age. She was influential as a writer, rhetorician and critic during the medieval period, and was Europe's first female professional author.
Margery Kempe (1373-1439)
Margery Kempe was a British woman who could neither read nor write, but dictated her life story The Book of Margery Kempeafter receiving a vision of Christ during the birth of the first of her fourteen children. From the 15th century Kempe was viewed as a holy woman after her book was published in pamphlet form with any thought or behavior that could be viewed as nonconforming or unorthodox removed. When the original was rediscovered in 1934, a more complex self-portrait emerged.
Laura Cereta (1469-1499)
Laura Cereta was an Italian humanist and feminist who was influential in the letters she wrote to other intellectuals. Through her letters she fought for women's right to education and against the oppression of married women.
Margaret Fell (1614-1702)
Margaret Fell was a British founding member of the Religious Society of Friends, and was popularly known as the "mother of Quakerism". She was persecuted and imprisoned for speaking her mind. She is credited with many essential changes within the Quaker church which brought more freedom for women in religious, social, and political areas.
Margaret Cavendish (c. 1623-1673)
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, was a British novelist, playwright, philosopher, poet, and rhetorician. Recent critics—most notably Christine Sutherland and Jane Donawerth—have explored her rhetorical theory and practice. Key works in this vein include:
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-1695)
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a Mexican who entered a convent to dedicate her life to scholarship. She took part in the elite intellectual circles of her time, and many see her as the first feminist of the New World. She wrote poetry, essays, and religious treatises, and argued for a more holistic role for women in society.
Mary Astell (1668-1731)
Many regard Mary Astell as the first English feminist writer. In her anonymous publications, Astell vigorously supported equal education opportunities for women.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)
Mary Wollstonecraft was a British writer who wrote abundantly across the disciplines. In her brief writing career she advocated women's equality and argued against the male birthright as a necessity for political rights. Today, she is celebrated as an essential force in the history of feminism.
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)
Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964)
Kate Chopin (1850-1904)
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)
Margaret Fuller was an American journalist, critic and women's rights activist, a contributor to the "first wave" of feminism in the US. Her idea of gender equality rested upon the transcendental notion of the universal one, the fact that female and male form a whole and require one another.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was prominent an American author, artist, lecturer, and feminist social reformer. She is best known for her short story The Yellow Wallpaper, which she based on her own experience with mental illness and misguided medical treatment.
Sarah Grimke (1792-1873)
Sarah Grimke was an American, who was influential in her work in the abolitionist movement during the Civil War and also for writings and lectures she made in support of President Abraham Lincoln.
Since Grimke was prohibited from receiving formal education, she educated herself to become the oritor she had always wanted to be. She also taught her personal slave to read even though it was against the law for her to do so. Grimke noted that fighting for abolition was as important as fighting for women's rights.
Frances Harper (1825-1911)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was involved in the 19th century temperance and the abolitionist movements. Stanton and Lucretia Mott were the primary organizers of the 1848 Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Stanton drafted a "Declaration of Sentiments" for the convention, in which she declares that men and women are created equal. She also proposed a resolution demanding the right to vote be extended to include women. That resolution was voted upon at the convention and carried. Stanton went on to write many important documents and speeches of the women's rights movement.
Maria W. Stewart(1803-1879)
Maria W. Stewart was an African American public speaker, abolitionist, and feminist. Her speeches addressed the plight of Northern black people and drew arguments from the Scriptures. She became the first woman to speak in front of a mixed audience, both male and female, black and white.
Sojourner Truth (1797-1883)
Sojourner Truth was an American abolitionist. A former slave, she became an important rhetorical figure for the women's rights movement. Truth could neither read nor write, but had powerful oratory skills, which she used to challenge white Americans to live up to their own ideals.
Ida B. Wells (1862-1931)
Born into slavery, Ida B. Wells researched and rallied campaigns against systematic lynching in the South at the end of the 1800s. After much personal tragedy, she expanded her activism to Europe. Wells was known for her strong belief in logos and her idea that the truth speaks for itself.
Fannie Barrier Williams (1855-1944)
Sarah Winnemucca (1841-1891)
Gertrude Buck (1871-1922)
Mary Augusta Jordan (1855-1941)
Born to Augusta Woodbury Ricker and Edward Jordan, Mary Augusta Jordan and her sisters were provided with the best educational opportunities; namely, Jordan's father sent her to college in 1872 instead of her brother when finances allowed him to send only one child. She graduate in 1876, becoming a Vassar Librarian before earning her Master's of the Arts in English in 1878. In 1884, the Smith College President L. Clark Seelye lured her away from Vassar to his college: she became an assistant professor in rhetoric and Anglo-Saxon; she was able to maintain her teaching positions until she retired in 1921 because she never married, as was custom at that time.
In 1906, she became a full professor at Smith College, as well as the head of the English Department while also serving as an informal adviser to three Smith presidents. As a professor, she was known to encourage honesty and freedom of expression and motivated student self-criticism without loss of self-confidence.
In 1910, she was presented with a Smith College honorary doctorate of Humane Letters, and in 1921, she was then presented with a Syracuse University doctorate of Pedagogy. In that same year, she retired from her teaching position and went to New Haven. She eventually died in 1941.
As for her writings, Jordan encouraged an understanding of "proper" usage of English grammar, but she acknowledged that writing and speaking embodied different aspects of the English language. "Proper" English was, according to her, whatever one interpreted it to be and how one proceeded to use it.
Margaret Sanger (1879-1966)
Margaret Sanger was the founder of the American Birth Control League (currently called Planned Parenthood), a birth control activist, and an advocate of certain aspects of eugenics. Sanger eventually gained support of the public and courts for ideas giving women the right to decide when and how she will bear children even though the public and courts were fiercely opposed to them at first. Margaret Sanger was instrumental in opening the way to universal access to birth control.
Emma Goldman (1869-1940)
Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935)
Dorothy Day (1897-1980)
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
Virginia Woolf was a British author who is considered, by many, to be one of the foremost modernist/feminist literary figures of the twentieth century. Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group between World War I and World War II.
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)
Rachel Carson (1907-1964)
Adrienne Rich (1929- )
Helene Cixous (1937- )
Cixous is considered one of the three most famous feminists in France, being a professor of literature at the Universite de Paris VIII which she helped to found in 1968. She has written more than thirty books of fiction as well as numerous essays and plays. She urges women to reclaim their natural relationships with their bodies and become rhetorically expressive. Cixous's work sparked the French feminist theory of écriture feminine.
Julia Kristeva (1941- )
Audre Lorde (1934-1992)
Merle Woo (1941- )
An Asian American activist who brought two lawsuits against the University of California in the 1980s for race, gender, sexual orientation, and political bias. In her "Letter to Ma," she re-lives the silent relationship with her mother and addresses social issues such as racism, sexism, oppression and exploitation as underlying themes. Her letter resonates with the Asian American experience and reclaims power and pride for Asian American heritage.
Alice Walker (1944- )
Evelyn Fox Keller (1936- )
Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005)
Paula Gunn Allen (1939- )
Gloria Anzaldua (1942-2004)
June Jordan (1936-2002)
bell hooks (1952- )
bell hooks, who was born Gloria Jean Watkins, is an internationally recognized intellectual, speaker, writer, and social activist. She focuses on how race, class, and gender and their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and domination are interconnected. She is a recognized author and has published over thirty books and numerous scholarly and mainstream articles. She has also appeared in several documentary films, and participated in various public lectures. hooks addresses race, gender, and class in education, sexuality, feminism, history, art and the mass media through a black female perspective.
Nancy Mairs (1964- )
Terry Tempest-Williams (1955- )
Minnie Bruce Pratt (1946- )
Dorothy Allison (1949- )
Nomy Lamm (1976- )
Nomy Lamm is a self-described “fat-ass bad-ass Jew dyke amputee.” She is also an award winning musician (queer punk). She forces her audience, whether through her music or through her lectures, to consider the oppression of fat people. Because of this activism, she earned the title "Woman of the Year" from Ms. Magazine.
Leslie Marmon Silko (1948 - )
Ruth Behar (1962- )
Behar was born in Cuba in 1962. Her parents moved Behar's family to the US where she became an accomplished poet, writer, filmmaker, and anthropologist. She is currently employed at the University of Michigan.