This chapter will examine the way that media outside of the suffrage movement responded to the visual rhetoric of suffragists. The suffrage media campaign was very careful and coordinated, but the response was much less so. Whether or not leading publications and films either accepted or rejected the new suffrage model suggests the degree to which the revised strategy of woman suffrage was persuasive.

        Gauging the effectiveness of the revised strategy of woman suffragists between 1910 and 1920 is difficult. For instance, the film Your Girl and Mine, the NAWSA melodrama from 1914 was reportedly abandoned when “the arrangement with the Film Corporation proved impossible and it finally had to be abandoned.”[1] Yet, the film played in cities from Omaha, El Paso, New York, Chicago, and Tacoma.[2] Advertisements and reviews indicate that the film was shown in a large variety of cities, generally with good reception. However, the History of Woman Suffrage only mentions the photoplay as a film viewed at a suffrage meeting. The production of films by suffrage organizations, therefore, tells us very little about the reception of the suffragists’ new media campaign, but a lot about the intent of organizations like NAWSA. Instead, the media that discusses the suffrage media itself is most useful in understanding the reception. 

The most reasonable places to start looking for reaction to suffrage activities are the same types of media that suffragists used themselves. As a result, I have examined political cartoons, postcards, films, and newspapers to understand the dialog between suffrage publications and the response by outside publications. This exchange of the suffrage image helps illuminate how well suffrage fit into the existing framework of American mass media.

1. Anti-Suffrage and the Fear of Gender Inversion
2. Negative Suffrage Depictions on Film
3. Anti Archetypes
4. The Anti Shift
5. Suffrage Supporters
6. The Kewpies Arrive