5 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2017
  2. Feb 2017
    1. that woman may occasionally be brought out of the ordinary sphere of action, and occupy in ci~ lher church or slate positions of.high responsibil-il y; and if, in the orderings of providence, it so occur, the God of providence will enable her lo meet the emergency with becoming dignity, wis-dom, and womanly grace.

      It seems like Palmer holds a view somewhere between Astell and Grimke, in that women have appropriate spheres in which to "act," but that sometimes God will allow women to "be brought out of the ordinary sphere of action" in order to do His will. The fact that God approves this allows women to keep their "womanly grace".

    1. I shall only remark that it might well suit the poet's fancy, who sings of sparkling eyes and coral lips, and knights in armor clad; but it seems to me ut-terly inconsistent with the dignity of a Christian body, to endeavor to draw such an anti-scriptural distinction between men and women. Ah! howl many of my sex feel in the dominion, thus un· righteously exercised over them, under the gentle appellation of f'rutection, that what they have leaned upon has proved a broken recd at besl, and oft a spear.

      This is badass and actually had me loling. Basically, Grimké says: "That little poetry bit was cute and all, but frankly, I find your comparison of the female body to a beautiful (but still frail and dependent and clingy) vine as fancifully out-of-touch, demeaning to my faith, and personally offensive to my sex. P.S. The metaphorical tree of masculinity that women supposedly lean on for support and protection (anyone catch the underlying phallic reference here?) is actually either a weak twig or a weapon that impales us. So thanks."

    2. When the sisters addressed groups together, Sarah usually began by carefully laying out evidence of slavery's evils and biblical justifications for opposing it, and then Angelina would take the floor to passionately denounce the institution based on her eyewitness experience of its horrors, exhorting the audience to act before this moral evil brought Divine vengeance on the nation.

      Thinking here about Whateley when he admits that logic alone may not always be enough when forming an argument.

      "Are emotions not part of human decision? Do we not often seek to persuade ourselves to choose a course of action by representing to ourselves appropriate thoughts and feelings? It is legitimate and necessary, Whateley says, to stimulate emotions such as hope, fear, and altruism because they lead to worthy aims."

      It's almost as if the Grimké sisters operate in the kind of rhetorical duality that Whateley imagines between "logic" and "passion" but do so in a physical sense by literally sharing the stage. Sarah acts as the "logic" when systematically presenting evidence and justification, and Angelina acts as the "passion" by motivating the audience into action by supplementing the evidence with feeling.