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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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Suffrage Supporters


The suffrage movement certainly had opponents, but as the movement evolved into a more approachable representation of woman suffragiststhe movement gained considerable support in popular magazines. For instance, Puck, a popular humor magazine, began publishing positive suffrage cartoons after 1911. The magazine seems to have adopted the same type of depictions of woman suffragists as did popular suffrage organs. In 1915 Puck published “The Awakening,” a cartoon featuring a classical-looking woman sporting a gold toga, torch, and cape labeled “Votes for Women” bringing the light of liberty from the West to women of the East. The cartoon takes up the popular use of classic Greco-Roman figure used by NAWSA in cartoons and public demonstrations and tableaus. Again, a popular news outlet seems to have adopted, consciously or not, one of the types of arguments that suffragists produced and disseminated on their own accord.


Puck often found itself on the supporting side of suffragists. Often, the humor magazine presented cartoons that would have fit very well on either the pages of The Suffragist or the Woman’s Journal. “Revised” appeared in the magazine in April, 1917. The cartoon features an allegorical, classical figure wielding a scroll and a pen. The wall reads “Woman’s sphere is the home,” with the home crossed out and replaced with “wherever she makes good.” The woman holds a list of places where woman’s place could be: the home, the law, industry, the school, the stage, business, the arts. The cartoon suggests that woman has revised her position relative to society, which fits very much into the suffragists’ suggestion that granting women the vote would not be radical, but rather a change that has, in large part, already occurred. Woman already exerts influence on all of these parts of society, the vote would only empower her to do so more efficiently.

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