I grew up in a household where sex was far from taboo. Purity balls were in full swing, and my parents were black Christians in their mid-thirties who had just started homeschooling the year before. I Kissed Dating Goodbye was five years old. My parents gave me my purity ring when I was twelve. One hundred and fifty years later, many of those same Victorian stereotypes occupy precious space in some quarters of evangelicalism, in spite of their history of barring certain kinds of women from participating in their full expression. Her point is crystal clear: these Victorian standards of womanhood only applied to certain women in 1851. 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 have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman? That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. And Sojourner used the picture to her advantage: We all know the picture that the Victorian stereotype paints: a beautiful, virtuous woman, the pinnacle of decorum and purity. She spoke during an incredibly pivotal season in American history: the wake of the Industrial Revolution, the dying years of American chattel slavery, the birth of first wave feminism, and the height of Victorian ideology. A few months ago, my class read Ain’t I A Woman, a speech that Sojourner Truth gave at the 1851 Women’s Convention in Akron Ohio.
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