ELLENVILLE, NY — “Someone’s Got to Wash the Dishes” was performed on Saturday, March 7 at the Ellenville Public Library and offered a funny and eye-opening look at the arguments people once made against women having the right to vote, or suffragism. Performed by Michèle LaRue, the one-woman satire brings the language of the anti-suffrage movement to life in a way that makes the audience laugh—while realizing how familiar some of those ideas still sound today.  The performance itself was lively and engaging, and showed how humor has long been used to challenge unfair ideas.

“Someone’s Got to Wash the Dishes” is based on “An Anti-Suffrage Monologue” by Marie Jenney Howe. Howe’s mother was a suffragist and her sister a lawyer, according to biographical information provided by LaRue. Howe herself earned a bachelor’s degree in divinity, married, and moved to New York City in 1910. The monologue was published by the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1913, and was performed at pro-suffrage meetings around the county.

What made the afternoon especially meaningful was the lecture that followed. LaRue shared more about the history of the suffrage movement and the time period in which the piece was written, helping the audience understand the cultural and political climate women were up against. 

The conversation didn’t stop when the talk ended; people stayed to ask questions and share thoughts, creating a lively discussion among a crowd that was intergenerational and thoughtful—and there were obviously some history buffs in the crowd.

The event was also a great example of how important community spaces like libraries can be. They give people a place not just to read, but to gather, learn and explore history and culture together. (Some people mentioned they attended the event as they saw it in the River Reporter, a full-circle moment.)

Why women should not have the vote

By MR. AND MRS. JOHN MARTIN

At a time when half the world is at war and the truth is made plain that the government of all nations rests upon force, and that no law is worth a scrap of paper more than the force of the gun  behind it, woman suffragists propose that women shall encumber government with special laws, which they themselves could not enforce, and which men must, therefore, be prepared to die for if necessary. The male voter is committed to the task of backing up his vote with his fist or his gun in case it can be enforced in no other way. A woman’s vote has no guaranty behind it and therefore she can never be a citizen in the same sense that a man is a citizen… She casts her ballot when and where men suffer her to do so. She can neither secure the ballot nor hold it without his consent. She may rail at this as much as she likes; but such is the case, and nobody is to blame for it except Nature, which made her the weaker.

… Many women think that they want to vote because they do not quite know what voting is about. They don’t realize that its object is to make laws. And laws, as every woman knows, are a nuisance… they lack the aptitude to either make laws or to obey them. In a world of women there would be few laws made, and fewer still enforced. It is woman’s way to get along somehow… compromising with each difficulty as it arises. And there is much to be said for this method.

—Mr. and Mrs. John Martin, “Feminism: Its Fallacies and Follies” (1916) 

Josiah Allen explains why women shouldn’t vote

By HIS WIFE 

“I heard you say wimmin ought to vote, and I say she hadn’t. I shall always say that she is too fraguile, too delikate, it would be too hard for her to go to the pole.” 

“There is one pole you are willin’ enough I should go to, Josiah Allen,” and I stopped allegorin’, and spoke with witherin’ dignity and self respect—“and that is the hop pole.” (Josiah has sot out a new hop yard, and he proudly brags to the neighbors that I am the fastest picker in the yard.) “You are willin’ enough I should handle them poles!” 

He looked smit and conscience struck, but still true to the inherient principles of his sect, and thier doggy obstinacy, he murmured—“If wimmin know when they are well off, they will let poles and ’lection boxes alone, it is too wearin for the fair sect.” 

“Josiah Allen,” says I, “you think that for a woman to stand up straight on her feet, under a blazin’ sun, and lift both her arms above her head, and pick seven bushels of hops, mingled with worms and spiders, into a gigantic box, day in, and day out, is awful healthy, so strengthenin’ and stimulatin’ to wimmin, but when it comes to droppin’ a little slip of clean paper into a small seven by nine box, once a year in a shady room, you are afraid it is goin’ to break down a woman’s constitution to once.” He was speechless, and clung to Ayer’s almanac mechanically (as it were) and I continued— “There is another pole you are willin’ enough for me to handle, and that is our cistern pole. If you should spend some of the breath you waste—in pityin’ the poor wimmin that have got to vote—in byin’ a pump, you would raise 25 cents in my estimation, Josiah Allen. You have let me pull on that old cistern pole thirteen years, and get a ten quart pail of water on to the end of it, and I guess the political pole wouldn’t draw much harder than that does.”

“I guess I will get one, Samantha, when I sell the old critter. I have been a calculatin’ to every year, but things will kinder run along.”

“I am aware of that,” says I in a tone of dignity cold as a lump of cold ice. “I am aware of that. You may go into any neighborhood you please, and if there is a family in it, where the wife has to set up leeches, make soap, cut her own kindlin’ wood, build fires in winter, set up stove-pipes, dround kittens, hang out clothes lines, cord beds, cut up pork, skin calves, and hatchel flax with a baby lashed to her side—I haint afraid to bet you a ten cent bill, that that woman’s husband thinks that wimmin are too feeble and delicate to go the pole.”

…Says Josiah, “Wimmen are too good to vote with us men, wimmen haint much more nor less than angels any way.” 

When you have been soarin’ in eloquence, it is always hard to be brought down sudden—it hurts you to light—and this speech sickened me, and says I, in a tone so cold that he shivered imperceptibly. “Josiah Allen, there is one angel that would be glad to have a little wood got for her to get dinner with, there is one angel that cut every stick of wood she burnt yesterday, that same angel doin’ a big washin’ at the same time,” and says I, repeatin’ the words, as I glanced at the beef over the cold and chilly stove, “I should like a handful of wood Josiah Allen.”

“I would get you some this minute Samantha,” says he gettin’ up and takin’ down his plantin’ bag, “but you know jest how hurried I be with my spring’s work, can’t you pick up a little for this forenoon? you haint got much to do have you?”

“Oh no!” says I in a lofty tone of irony, “Nothin’ at all, only a big ironin’, ten pies and six loves of bread to bake, a cheese curd to run up, 3 hens to scald, churnin’ and moppin’ and dinner to get. Jest a easy mornin’s work for a angel.”

“Wall then, I guess you’ll get along, and to-morrow I’ll try to get you some.”

I said no more, but with lofty emotions surgin’ in my breast, I took my axe and started for the wood-pile.

— “Josiah Allen’s Wife” (Marietta Holley) in “My Opinions and Betsey Bobbet’s” (1873)

Despite all, the amendment passed

A proposed amendment in Congress in 1919, to grant women the right the vote, reads in part:

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” 

The Nineteenth Amendment was then passed on June 4, 1919, and ratified in 1920. 

The website www.constitution.congress.gov notes that many women, including minorities, faced poll taxes and literacy tests in some states, which made it difficult or impossible for them to vote.  

Want to learn more?

Library of Congress, information on the history of women’s suffrage for classrooms, www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/womens-suffrage/

Primary source material, Christopher Newport University, www.cnu.libguides.com/the1910s/womensuffrage

Djuna Barnes, “How it feels to be forcibly fed,” www.en.wikisource.org/wiki/How_It_Feels_to_Be_Forcibly_Fed