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“Fine Dignity, Picturesque Beauty, and Serious Purpose”:

The Reorientation of Suffrage Media in the Twentieth Century

Emily Scarbrough, Author

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Ephemera

            Suffragists solidified their claims to legitimacy through a number of commodities. One of the most unique pieces of suffrage ephemera is The Suffrage Cookbook. Compiled in 1915, it featured a number of recipes submitted by famous woman suffragists. Ruth Medill McCormick’s fine bread, Julia Lathrop’s quick tip about organizing a kitchen, Carrie Chapman Catt’s Pain d’Oefs, and letters from six governors all appear inside the cookbook.[1] The cookbook is significant in that in paints suffragists as women who are working within their own home as much as they are working toward their political aims. Suffragists wanted to appear to as feminine, and perhaps there was no singular task that appears more womanly than feeding one’s family. The Suffrage Cookbook gives insight into how suffragists embraced consumer culture as a way to spread their campaign. In the same way that they produced media content, suffragists produced real physical objects, mementos by which they could easily be identified. Suffragists engrained the movement into popular culture by creating and distributing materials that were readily consumed in this era of mass consumption.


[1] L. O. Kleber, The Suffrage Cookbook (Pittsburgh: The Equal Franchise Federation of Western Pennsylvania, 1915).
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