B.A.

LLB, 2nd Year

ENGLISH - II

MODULE 1
Law and Literature: Texts

1.1. Justice by John Galsworthy

Justice, a drama written by John Galsworthy aimed to bring reforms in the British system of Justice.
The play is not just about bringing reforms in solitary confinement but about the judicial process
and the broader relationship of punishment to crime.

The four-act play revolves around the protagonist William Falder, a young solicitor's clerk, who
embezzled money from his firm to rescue the woman he loves from her unhappy marriage. He is
handed over to the police after he confesses his forgery. The judge, in the trial then sentences him a
three years penal servitude. He has been put in solitary confinement and finds himself to be a victim
of the terrible system. The authorities admit that he is mentally and physically in bad shape but do
nothing to help him.

He was supposed to register himself with the police authorities but he failed to do so and commits
suicide as he thought that he would be put in prison again. The socio-revolutionary significance of
Justice consists of the portrayal of the inhuman system that exists between the crime and
punishment awarded for the same.

Galsworthy believed that solitary confinement is a long slow dragging misery, whose worst moments
are necessarily and utterly hidden from one's eyes. Galsworthy knew that he would get widespread
support from the people as his drama had deeply touched the people. His drama showed people the
reality of prison life. He helped people realize that celibacy and a monotonous diet were a severe
punishment in itself and when combined with solitude and absolute silence made it more miserable.
He believed that a person could be reformed with kindness and there was no need for solitude or
silence.

Justice impacted and moved a lot of people including Winston Churchill and he was greatly
influenced by the solitary confinement scene in the drama. Churchill had major legislative changes in
mind and considered Galsworthy the most respected of all the people that influenced him.
Churchill's intention as Home Secretary was to carry out a sweeping revision of penal policy along
three main lines of advance: the improvement of prison conditions; the exclusion of petty offenders
from gaol; and the reform of sentencing policy.

Galsworthy was a firm believer that encouraging mental and moral development through expanded
educational facilities was the most effective way to reform a criminal. He suggested many ways such
as copybooks being allowed in the Berlin prison and allowing more communication with family and
friends outside to bring about reforms in the prisoners. He also suggested that prisoners' aid
societies should be linked up into prisoner's labour exchange so that the prisoners could be
employed and wouldn't have to turn to crimes again.

Churchill in 1910 announced certain reforms for reducing the numbers of people sent to prison. He
proposed a wider application of the recently passed Probation of Offenders Act, more time-to-pay
for debtors and fined offenders, and more help for discharged prisoners to keep them from
re-offending. Juveniles would not be committed to prison except for serious offenses. Lastly he
announced a reduction in solitary confinement from three months to one month.

This was just one milestone achieved and there were many more yet to be achieved. Later through a
public letter Galsworthy suggested the end in his efforts towards bringing reforms and the reason
for this is unknown.

Justice might have not led to abolishing separate confinement but is a partial success. Without the
drama reaching politicians, middle classes or the judges; the decision for reducing solitary
confinement to one month couldn't have been made.

It is shocking to see the relevance and impact of Galsworthy's Justice is the fact that to this day his
drama remains one of the best known examples of such a system of justice.

1.2. St. Joan - George B. Shaw

In 1429 A.D., a young country girl known simply as Joan of Arc, or sometimes simply as The Maid,
is given an interview by Robert de Baudricourt since she will not leave until she speaks with him.
She tells him that she needs horses and armor to go to the Dauphin of France and to raise the siege
of Orleans, a city held captive by the English forces. She knows that a siege would be possible
because the voices of Saints Margaret and Catherine have told her what to do. Upon being
convinced by The Maid's simplicity, Captain de Baudricourt grants her request.
Upon arriving at the Dauphin's castle, The Maid encounters all sorts of difficulties, especially with
the Dauphin, who wants nothing to do with wars and fighting. When France's military fortunes and
predicament are reviewed, Joan's demands that something be done to improve France's condition
fall on deaf ears, but when she is alone with the Dauphin, she is able to instill enough courage in him
so that he finally consents to let her lead the army, knowing full well that she can't make France's
condition worse.

Joan then goes to the Loire River near Orleans, where she encounters Dunois, the commander of
the French forces; he explains the necessity of waiting until the wind changes, but Joan is determined
to lead her forces against the English stronghold without waiting; suddenly, the wind does change
favorably, and Dunois pledges his allegiance to The Maid.

Sometime later, in the English camp, Warwick, the leader of the English forces, and his chaplain, de
Stogumber, are maintaining that The Maid must be a witch because there is no other way of
accounting for the heavy English losses and defeats except by sorcery.

The Bishop of Beauvais, Peter Cauchon, enters and discusses the fate of Joan of Arc. Cauchon's
principal intellectual concern is that Joan is setting up her own private conscience in place of the
authority of the Church. Warwick, who is not influenced by the concerns of the Church, is, instead,
concerned that Joan is telling the common people and the serfs to pledge their allegiance directly to
the king, whereas the entire feudal system is based upon the lower classes pledging their allegiance to
their immediate lords and masters. Joan's simple pleas can possibly destroy the entire feudal system.
Cauchon also adds that Joan is trying to get the common people to pledge further allegiance to their
native countries (France and England) instead of to the Universal Catholic Church, an act which
would further lessen the power of the Church. Thus, for different reasons, both agree that The Maid
must be put to death.

After more victories, Joan has finally been able to fulfill her promise to drive the English back and
have the Dauphin crowned king in the Cathedral at Rheims. After the ceremony, Joan is anxious to
move on and capture Paris and drive the English from the city. The Dauphin, however, is content
now with what he has recaptured, Commander Dunois is hesitant to start another campaign after all
of the recent successes, and the Archbishop is beginning to find Joan to be too proud and defiant.
Joan then realizes that she must stand alone in the same way that "saints have always stood alone,"
and in spite of the warning that if she falls into the enemy's hands, neither the military, nor the state,
nor the Church will lift a hand to rescue her.

Some nine months later, Joan is standing trial for heresy. She has been imprisoned and in chains for
these nine months and has been questioned many times about the validity of her "voices." After
many complicated theological questions, her accusers force Joan to admit that her voices were not
heavenly sent voices but, instead, came from Satan. After her recantation of the voices, her judges
then sentence her to perpetual imprisonment and isolation, living off only bread and water. Joan
rejects this horrid punishment and tears up her recantation. She is immediately carried to the stake
and burnt as a witch; afterward, the Executioner enters and announces that Joan's heart would not
burn.

Some twenty-five years later, in an Epilogue, Joan reappears before the king (the former Dauphin)
and her chief accusers, who have now been condemned by a subsequent court, which has
pronounced Joan innocent of all charges and her judges guilty of all sorts of crimes.

The time then moves to 1920, when Joan is declared to be a saint by the Church. As such, she now
has the power to return as a living woman, and she asks everyone present if she should return. This is
a horrifying prospect for them all, and they all confess that they wish her to remain dead. Joan then
asks God, "O Lord, how long before the world will be ready to accept its saints?

1.3 A Passage to India - E. M. Forster

A Passage to India was divided by E. M. Forster into three parts. The first part, "Mosque," begins with
what is essentially a description of the city of Chandrapore. The physical separation of the city into
sections, plus the separation of earth and sky, are indicative of a separation of deeper significance
that exists between the Indian and English sectors.

This novel deals with human relationships, and the theme that determines its plot line is introduced
in this section: "Is it possible for the Indian and the Englishman to be friends?" To show both sides
of this question, the reader is first introduced to Dr. Aziz and his friends. Aziz is a Moslem doctor
who practices at the government hospital in Chandrapore under the supervision of Major Callendar.
Among Aziz's friends are Hamidullah, an Indian barrister who has lived in England; Nawab
Bahadur, an influential landowner; and Mahmoud Ali. In the opening chapters these men are shown
discussing the English officials who govern under the British Raj in India.

Among the English faction, who also discuss the Anglo-Indian relationship, are Mr. Turton, the
Collector; Major Callendar, the English doctor; Mr. McBryde, the police magistrate; and Ronny
Heaslop, the city magistrate and the latest official to assume duties in Chandrapore.
Between these groups, or outside them, are Cyril Fielding, the English principal of the government
school, whose allegiance belongs to neither group; Mrs. Moore, mother of Ronny Heaslop, who has
come to India as chaperone to Miss Adela Quested, Ronny's intended fiancee; Professor Godbole, a
Hindu who is separated from the Moslems by his religion and* from the English by his religion and
nationality; and the English missionaries, Mr. Graysford and Mr. Sorley, who share none of the
arrogance of English officialdom as they attempt to convert the Indians to Christianity.

The story opens with Aziz's arrival at Hamidullah's house, where he is to spend a social evening with
his friends. Their conversation centers upon the indignities that the Indian must suffer at the hands
of the English officials and their wives. Young Ronny Heaslop, whom they dub the "red-nosed boy,"
is a particular object of ridicule.

Aziz is summoned to the house of his superior, Major Callendar. He is late in arriving and when he
arrives, he finds the major gone. Two English women preempt his tonga and on the walk back to his
house he encounters Mrs. Moore at the mosque. The old lady endears herself to Aziz by her innate
understanding of him and of Moslem custom; he calls her an Oriental.

Later, at the English club, Adela Quested expresses her desire to see the "real India" and is advised
by a passerby to "try seeing Indians." To humor her Mr. Turton offers to give a "Bridge Party," a
garden party ostensibly designed to bridge the distance between the English and the Indian, and to
give Adela and Mrs. Moore the opportunity to meet socially some of the upper-class Indians.

At Mrs. Moore's cottage that night Ronny and his mother discuss her encounter with Aziz at the
mosque. Ronny shows his unmistakable prejudice and Mrs. Moore is appalled at his inhumane
attitude. On her way to bed, she exhibits a sympathetic response to a wasp, one of the least of India's
creatures.

On the outskirts of the town, Mr. Sorley, the younger and more liberal of the two English
missionaries, while willing to accept that there may well be a heaven for mammals, cannot bring
himself to admit the lowly wasp.

The garden party given by the Turtons only serves to show more clearly the division of peoples, as
each group keeps to itself. Cyril Fielding, who mingles freely with the Indians, is impressed by the
friendliness of Mrs. Moore and Adela and invites them to tea at his home. They are also invited for a
Thursday morning visit — which never materializes — to the home of the Bhattacharya's, a Hindu
couple.

That evening, in a discussion with Ronny, Mrs. Moore is again appalled by her son, and quotes to
him from the Bible, reminding him that God is love and expects man to love his neighbor (though
she herself has found Him less satisfying in India than ever before). Ronny humors her, reminding
himself that she is old.

At tea at Fielding's house, Mrs. Moore and Adela visit pleasantly with Aziz and Professor Godbole,
enigmatic Hindu associate of Mr. Fielding. The kindness of Mrs. Moore and Adela Quested prompts
Aziz to invite them on an outing to the Marabar Caves, which they accept. Ronny Heaslop arrives at
Fielding's cottage to take his mother and Adela to a game of polo; his discourtesy to Aziz and his
arrogant demeanor toward all Indians causes Adela and Ronny to quarrel, and Adela tells Ronny she
cannot marry him.

Later the young people go for a ride with Nawab Bahadur, and when the automobile is involved in
an accident with an unidentified animal on a back road, they are drawn together once more and
announce their engagement. Mrs. Moore accepts the news calmly, but when told of the accident she
murmurs, "A ghost!"

Aziz, pleased with the friendship shown him by Cyril Fielding, shows the English professor a picture
of his dead wife, a courtesy equal to inviting Fielding behind the purdah, the highest honor an
Indian can give.

The next section, "Caves," begins with a detailed description of the Marabar Caves, the peculiar
hollow caverns within the equally curious Marabar Hills that rise from an otherwise flat area outside
the city of Chandrapore.

It is to these caves that Aziz has planned an elaborate trip for Mrs. Moore and Adela Quested. He
has also included Fielding and Godbole in the invitation. Unfortunately, Fielding and Godbole miss
the train and Aziz is left in full charge of the expedition, which begins with a train ride and ends with
an elephant ride to the immediate vicinity of the caves. In the first cave Mrs. Moore is terrified by an
echo and the press of the crowd and declines to go farther.

Aziz, a guide, and Adela go on alone. Adela, pondering her engagement to Ronny, unwisely asks
Aziz if he has more than one wife. The excitable little Indian, upset by her queries, dashes into a cave
to recover his composure. Adela wanders aimlessly into another cave and is supposedly assaulted by
someone there. She rushes down the side of the hill, where she meets Nancy Derek, an English
companion to a maharani, who has brought Fielding to the caves. Nancy returns the overwrought
Adela to Chandrapore.

In the meantime Aziz, knowing nothing of what has happened to Adela, entertains his other friends
and returns with them by train. At the station he is met by Mr. Haq, the police inspector, who arrests
him for assaulting Miss Quested.

Fielding alienates himself from the English by siding with Aziz. The English rally around Adela and
press for a quick conviction. Mrs. Moore, now sunk into a state of apathy, refuses to admit that Aziz
may be guilty but also refuses to testify in his behalf in court; Ronny arranges passage for her to
England. On the way she dies; her name, however, becomes for a time a legend to the natives of
Chandrapore.

At the trial, Adela Quested, who has been in a state of shock since the incident at the caves,
suddenly finds her mind clear again and exonerates Aziz. Her withdrawal of the charge against Aziz
causes her to be ostracized by the English. Fielding reluctantly offers her the use of his cottage while
he is absent on official business, and Ronny eventually breaks their engagement. Disillusioned by her
experience in India, Adela returns to England; and Fielding persuades Aziz to drop a damage suit
against her.
Two years later the setting of the novel shifts to the Hindu state of Mau in a section entitled
"Temple." Following the trial, Fielding had returned to England, married, and was then sent on a
tour of central India to inspect government schools. Godbole has become the Minister of Education
at Mau, and through his influence, Aziz has become personal physician to the Rajah of Mau.

The opening chapter of this section describes a Hindu ceremony honoring the birth of the god
Krishna. Professor Godbole directs the temple choir and, in an ecstasy of religious fervor, dances his
joy. While in this almost trancelike state he remembers Mrs. Moore and a wasp, associating them as
he contemplates the love of God. The biblical statement "God is Love," with which Mrs. Moore had
exhorted her son, is repeated in the Hindu ceremony, although through an error in its printing it
becomes "God si Love."

Aziz is annoyed when he discovers that Fielding is visiting Mau in line with his official duties. He has
become thoroughly disillusioned with the British and even with Fielding; when he learned that
Fielding had married in England, he concluded that the wife was Adela Quested and henceforth
refused to read any of Fielding's letters. Aziz has married again and has his children with him.
Although he does not embrace Hinduism, he is tolerant of their festivals and is finding peace and
contentment away from British domination. He has, however, let his practice of medicine degenerate
until he is little more than a glorified medicine man.

When Aziz meets Fielding again, he learns that Stella Moore, not Adela Quested, is Fielding's wife.
Stella and her brother Ralph have accompanied Fielding to India. Aziz forms a special attachment
for Ralph, whose bee stings he treats, because Ralph shows many of the traits of his mother, Mrs.
Moore.

The Hindu festival continues after the celebration of the birth of the god. Fielding and Stella go out
in a boat to better observe the ceremony, as do Aziz and Ralph in another boat. In the storm the
boats collide with each other and capsize. In the general confusion that follows, the ceremony comes
to an end and the English return to the guest house. Aziz has confided to Ralph that the rajah has
died, but the announcement of his death is suspended until after the festival.

Hinduism affects both Stella and Ralph, but Fielding cannot understand the effect it has on them,
though he is intrigued by it. Aziz believes that Ralph, at least, has an Oriental mind, as Mrs. Moore
had.

Although Fielding finds that the school that Professor Godbole was to superintend has been
neglected and the building turned into a granary, he does nothing to rectify the situation. The floods,
which have kept Fielding in Mau, abate, and he and his party make plans to leave. Before they go,
Fielding and Aziz take a final horseback ride together. Good-naturedly, they argue about the
Anglo-Indian problem. Aziz excitedly declares that India must be united and the English driven out.
Sensing that this is the end of their association, Aziz and Fielding attempt to pledge eternal
friendship in spite of their differences, but the path narrows and their horses are forced apart,
signifying that such a friendship is not yet possible.

1.4 Counselor - at - law by Elmer Rice

Counsellor At Law is taken from Elmer Rice’s hit Broadway play that starred Paul Muni, who
refused the movie role. This thought-provoking drama is about the rags-to-riches tale of an
assimilated Jewish lawyer who is crushed when he learns that his Wasp wife is unfaithful and still
looks down upon him because of his humble beginnings despite his success and the kindness and
love he shows to her. It’s eloquently directed by William Wyler (“Roman Holiday”/ “Ben-Hur”). It
catches the actor known as the Great Profile, John Barrymore, at his peak before in a few years he
would decline because of his losing bout with alcohol. Working with breakneck speed dialogue, as
was the case with early talkies, Barrymore resorted to using cue cards since he was beginning to have
trouble remembering his lines. But that didn’t effect his brilliantly restrained performance that was
filled with character integrity, pathos and deep emotion. The Waspish Barrymore played the Jewish
lawyer with great conviction and sincerity, catching the workaholic lawyer’s deepest fear of
disbarment over a questionable ethical decision he made a number of years ago to save a guilty client
he believed would be reformed if given a chance from an unfair long sentence–which proved to be
the case.

In its serious moments, this comedy-drama is one of the best lawyer films made during any time
period. Despite the clichéd characters and story, and the claustrophobic setting of the entire film set
in the lawyer’s spacious office, the film always feels like it’s a rip-snortin’ movie and the genuine
article and never stage-struck.

George Simon (John Barrymore) has risen from the parents of Jewish immigrants, residing in
poverty, to become a powerful NYC lawyer, partners in a prosperous Fifth Avenue Empire State
Building office with John P. Tedesco (Onslow Stevens). He’s in all his glory just after getting an
accused murderess off on a not guilty verdict, and on the day after his office is filled with clients
from all walks of life–from the most prominent and wealthy to the impoverished from his past. Also
calling on him is his dear loving mother (Clara Langsner), who is proud of her son but worries he’s
not happy. When his pampered blueblood wife Cora (Doris Kenyon) calls upon him and brings the
spoiled snobbish boy and girl from her first marriage, who have kept their father’s name of Dwight,
we can see how distant she is and that the self-absorbed snob is only concerned with her own image.

Wyler builds the story around the characters in the workplace, both workers and clients, before
introducing the plot. By showing a number of clients interacting with the hotshot lawyer, from
important politicians ringing him up for advise to his doing a favor for his former neighborhood
pushcart lady whose son (Vincent Sherman), he knew as a baby, was clubbed hard on the kop and
arrested for making a radical speech at Union Square. It also shows him acting in a dubious moral
way, as he bilks the rich clients by padding their bills while he cuts his fees for the poor as if he were
a modern day Robin Hood. He also engages in insider trading that would make Martha Stewart kvell
with envy. His office staff consists of his brilliant lonely heart law clerk Weinberg and his
super-efficient and loyal secretary Miss ‘Rexy’ Gordon (Bebe Daniels), who has crush on him that he
doesn’t even notice. For comic relief there’s the colorful switchboard operator (Isabel Jewell), who
endearingly changes tones at the drop of a hat when talking either with the clients or friends. Charlie
McFadden (John Hammond Dailey) was a professional criminal, who was saved by George and
hired to do private eye work for the firm. It’s McFadden who comes through to save the day when
George is faced with the biggest crisis in his life, as one of those Silk Stocking lawyers (Elmer H.
Brown) has the goods on him for providing a phony alibi but has to drop those charges when
McFadden comes up with some dirt on him.

George is pictured as someone not about to apologize that he did something illegal. Instead, he sees
his whole life crashing down on him if can’t practice law because he doesn’t have a clue what else to
do with his life. When things get cleared up over the disbarment matter and he’s uncharacteristically
jubilant for the moment, the next stunning blow is that his wife is taking a boat to Europe with her
lover (Melvyn Douglas) aboard. This leads him to think about jumping out of his office window;
but, he’s stopped by his loyal secretary, who sees this as her chance to be with the man she loves.

This is an excellent drama that knows how to combine comedy with drama, and never forgets what
force is driving this powerful story. It’s a complete triumph.

1.5. 1984 by George Orwell

Winston Smith is a member of the Outer Party. He works in the Records Department in the
Ministry of Truth, rewriting and distorting history. To escape Big Brother's tyranny, at least inside his
own mind, Winston begins a diary — an act punishable by death. Winston is determined to remain
human under inhuman circumstances. Yet telescreens are placed everywhere — in his home, in his
cubicle at work, in the cafeteria where he eats, even in the bathroom stalls. His every move is
watched. No place is safe.

One day, while at the mandatory Two Minutes Hate, Winston catches the eye of an Inner Party
Member, O'Brien, whom he believes to be an ally. He also catches the eye of a dark-haired girl from
the Fiction Department, whom he believes is his enemy and wants him destroyed. A few days later,
Julia, the dark-haired girl whom Winston believes to be against him, secretly hands him a note that
reads, "I love you." Winston takes pains to meet her, and when they finally do, Julia draws up a
complicated plan whereby they can be alone.

Alone in the countryside, Winston and Julia make love and begin their allegiance against the Party
and Big Brother. Winston is able to secure a room above a shop where he and Julia can go for their
romantic trysts. Winston and Julia fall in love, and, while they know that they will someday be
caught, they believe that the love and loyalty they feel for each other can never be taken from them,
even under the worst circumstances.

Eventually, Winston and Julia confess to O'Brien, whom they believe to be a member of the
Brotherhood (an underground organization aimed at bringing down the Party), their hatred of the
Party. O'Brien welcomes them into the Brotherhood with an array of questions and arranges for
Winston to be given a copy of "the book," the underground's treasonous volume written by their
leader, Emmanuel Goldstein, former ally of Big Brother turned enemy.

Winston gets the book at a war rally and takes it to the secure room where he reads it with Julia
napping by his side. The two are disturbed by a noise behind a painting in the room and discover a
telescreen. They are dragged away and separated. Winston finds himself deep inside the Ministry of
Love, a kind of prison with no windows, where he sits for days alone. Finally, O'Brien comes.
Initially Winston believes that O'Brien has also been caught, but he soon realizes that O'Brien is
there to torture him and break his spirit. The Party had been aware of Winston's "crimes" all along;
in fact, O'Brien has been watching Winston for the past seven years.

O'Brien spends the next few months torturing Winston in order to change his way of thinking — to
employ the concept of doublethink, or the ability to simultaneously hold two opposing ideas in one's
mind and believe in them both. Winston believes that the human mind must be free, and to remain
free, one must be allowed to believe in an objective truth, such as 2 + 2 = 4. O'Brien wants Winston
to believe that 2 + 2 = 5, but Winston is resistant.

Finally, O'Brien takes Winston to Room 101, the most dreaded room of all in the Ministry of Love,
the place where prisoners meet their greatest fear. Winston's greatest fear is rats. O'Brien places over
Winston's head a mask made of wire mesh and threatens to open the door to release rats on
Winston's face. When Winston screams, "Do it to Julia!" he relinquishes his last vestige of humanity.

Winston is a changed man. He sits in the Chestnut Tree Café, watching the telescreens and
agonizing over the results of daily battles on the front lines. He has seen Julia again. She, too, is
changed, seeming older and less attractive. She admits that she also betrayed him. In the end, there is
no doubt, Winston loves Big Brother
 MODULE II

2.1 Susan Anthony

More than any other woman of her generation, Susan B. Anthony saw that all of the legal
disabilities faced by American women owed their existence to the simple fact that women
lacked the vote. When Anthony, at age 32, attended her first woman's rights convention in
Syracuse in 1852, she declared "that the right which woman needed above every other, the
one indeed which would secure to her all the others, was the right of suffrage." Anthony
spent the next fifty-plus years of her life fighting for the right to vote. She would work
tirelessly: giving speeches, petitioning Congress and state legislatures, publishing a feminist
newspaper--all for a cause that would not succeed until the ratification of the Nineteenth
Amendment fourteen years after her death in 1906.

She would, however, once have the satisfaction of seeing her completed ballot drop
through the opening of a ballot box. It happened in Rochester, New York on November
5, 1872, and the event--and the trial for illegal voting that followed--would create a
opportunity for Anthony to spread her arguments for women suffrage to a wider audience
than ever before.

The Vote

Anthony had been planning to vote long before 1872. She would later state that "I have
been resolved for three years to vote at the first election when I had been home for thirty
days before." (New York law required legal voters to reside for the thirty days prior to the
election in the district where they offered their vote.) Anthony had taken the position--and
argued it wherever she could--that the recently adopted Fourteenth Amendment gave
women the constitutional right to vote in federal elections. The Amendment said that "all
persons born and naturalized in the United States...are citizens of the United States," and
as citizens were entitled to the "privileges" of citizens of the United States. To Anthony's
way of thinking, those privileges certainly included the right to vote.

On November 1, 1872, Anthony and her three sisters entered a voter registration office set
up in a barbershop. The four Anthony women were part of a group of fifty women
Anthony had organized to register in her home town of Rochester. As they entered the
barbershop, the women saw stationed in the office three young men serving as registrars.
Anthony walked directly to the election inspectors and, as one of the inspectors would
later testify, "demanded that we register them as voters."

The election inspectors refused Anthony's request, but she persisted, quoting the
Fourteenth Amendment's citizenship provision and the article from the New York
Constitution pertaining to voting, which contained no sex qualification. The registers
remained unmoved. Finally, according to one published account, Anthony gave the men
an argument that she thought might catch their attention: "If you refuse us our rights as
citizens, I will bring charges against you in Criminal Court and I will sue each of you
personally for large, exemplary damages!" She added, "I know I can win. I have Judge
Selden as a lawyer. There is any amount of money to back me, and if I have to, I will push
to the 'last ditch' in both courts."

The stunned inspectors discussed the situation. They sought the advice of the Supervisor
of elections, Daniel Warner, who, according to thirty-three-year-old election inspector E. T.
Marsh, suggested that they allow the women to take the oath of registry. "Young men,"
Marsh quoted Warner as saying, "do you know the penalty of law if you refuse to register
these names?" Registering the women, the registrars were advised, "would put the entire
onus of the affair on them." Following Warner's advice, the three inspectors voted to
allow Anthony and her three sisters were registered to vote in Rochester's eighth ward.
Testifying later about the registration process, Anthony remembered "it was a full hour" of
debate "between the supervisors, the inspectors, and myself." In all, fourteen Rochester
women successfully registered that day, leading to calls in one city paper for the arrest of
the voting inspectors who complied with the women's demand. The Rochester Union and
Advertiser editorialized in its November 4 edition: "Citizenship no more carries the right to
vote that it carries the power to fly to the moon...If these women in the Eighth Ward offer
to vote, they should be challenged, and if they take the oaths and the Inspectors receive
and deposit their ballots, they should all be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."

Soon after the polls opened at the West End News Depot on Election Day, November 5,
Anthony and seven or eight other women cast their ballots. Inspectors voted two to one
to accept Anthony's vote, and her folded ballot was deposited in a ballot box by one of the
inspectors. Inspector E. T. Marsh testified later as to feeling caught between a rock and a
hard place: "Decide which way we might, we were liable to prosecution. We were
expected...to make an infallible decision, inside of two days, of a question in which some of
the best minds of the country are divided." Seven or eight more women of Rochester
successfully voted in the afternoon. Anthony's vote went to U. S. Grant and other
Republicans, based on that party's promise to give the demands of women a respectful
hearing. Later that day, Anthony would write of her accomplishment to her close friend
and fellow suffragist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton:

Dear Mrs Stanton

Well I have been & gone & done it!!--positively voted the Republican ticket--strait
this a.m. at 7 Oclock--& swore my vote in at that--was registered on Friday....then on
Sunday others some 20 or thirty other women tried to register, but all save two were
refused....Amy Post was rejected & she will immediately bring action for that....&
Hon Henry R. Selden will be our Counsel--he has read up the law & all of our
arguments & is satisfied that we our right & ditto the Old Judge Selden--his elder
brother. So we are in for a fine agitation in Rochester on the question--I hope the
morning's telegrams will tell of many women all over the country trying to vote--It is
splendid that without any concert of action so many should have moved here so
impromptu--

The Democratic paper is out against us strong & that scared the Dem's on the
registry board--How I wish you were here to write up the funny things said &
done....When the Democrat said my vote should not go in the box--one Republican
said to the other--What do you say Marsh?--I say put it in!--So do I said Jones--and
"we'll fight it out on this line if it takes all winter"....If only now--all the women
suffrage women would work to this end of enforcing the existing
constitution--supremacy of national law over state law--what strides we might make
this winter--But I'm awful tired--for five days I have been on the constant run--but
to splendid purpose--So all right--I hope you voted too.
Affectionately,
Susan B. Anthony

Arrest and Indictment

The votes of Susan Anthony and other Rochester women was a major topic of
conversation in the days that followed. In a November 11 letter to Sarah Huntington,
Anthony wrote: "Our papers are discussing pro & con everyday." Anthony occupied much
of her time meeting with lawyers to discuss a planned lawsuit by some of the women
whose efforts to register or vote were rejected.

Meanwhile, a Rochester salt manufacturer and Democratic poll watcher named Sylvester
Lewis filed a complaint charging Anthony with casting an illegal vote. Lewis had
challenged both Anthony's registration and her subsequent vote. United States
Commissioner William C. Storrs acted upon Lewis's complaint by issuing a warrant for
Anthony's arrest on November 14. The warrant charged Anthony with voting in a federal
election "without having a lawful right to vote and in violation of section 19 of an act of
Congress" enacted in 1870, commonly called The Enforcement Act. The Enforcement
Act carried a maximum penalty of $500 or three years imprisonment.

The actual arrest of Anthony was delayed for four days to allow time for Storrs to discuss
the possible prosecution with the U. S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York.
On November 18, a United States deputy marshal showed up at the Anthony home on
Madison Street in Rochester, where he was greeted by one of Susan's sisters. At the
request of the deputy, Anthony's sister summoned Susan to the parlor. Susan Anthony
had been expecting her visitor. As Anthony would later tell audiences, she had previously
received word from Commissioner Storrs "to call at his office." Anthony's response was
characteristically plainspoken: "I sent word to him that I had no social acquaintance with
him and didn't wish to call on him."

At the May meeting of the National Women's Suffrage Association, Anthony described
what happened when the deputy marshal, "a young man in beaver hat and kid gloves (paid
for by taxes gathered from women)," came to see her:

He sat down. He said it was pleasant weather. He hemmed and hawed and finally
said Mr. Storrs wanted to see me...."what for?" I asked. "To arrest you." said he. "Is
that the way you arrest men?" "No." Then I demanded that I should be arrested
properly. [According to another account, Anthony at this point held out her wrists
and demanded to be handcuffed.] My sister desiring to go with me he proposed that
he should go ahead and I follow with her. This I refused, and he had to go with me.
In the [horse-drawn] car he took out his pocketbook to pay fare. I asked if he did
that in his official capacity. He said yes; he was obliged to pay the fare of any
criminal he arrested. Well, that was the first cents worth I ever had from Uncle Sam.
Anthony was escorted to the office of Commissioner Storrs, described by Anthony as "the
same dingy little room where, in the olden days, fugitive slaves were examined and
returned to their masters." Upon arriving, Anthony was surprised to learn that among
those arrested for their activities on November 5 were not only the fourteen other women
voters, but also the ballot inspectors who had authorized their votes.

Anthony's lawyers refused to enter a plea at the time of her arrest, and Storrs scheduled a
preliminary examination for November 29. At the hearing on the 29th, complainant
Sylvestor Lewis and Eighth Ward Inspectors appeared as the chief witnesses against
Anthony. Anthony was questioned at the hearing by one of her lawyers, John Van Voorhis.
Van Voorhis tried to establish through his questions that Anthony believed that she had a
legal right to vote and therefore had not violated the 1870 Enforcement Act, which
prohibited only willful and knowing illegal votes. Anthony testified that she had sought
legal advice from Judge Henry R. Selden prior to casting her vote, but that Selden said "he
had not studied the question." Van Voorhis asked: "Did you have any doubt yourself of
your right to vote?" Anthony replied, "Not a particle." Storrs adjourned the case to
December 23.

After listening to legal arguments in December, Commissioner Storrs concluded that

Anthony probably violated the law. When Anthony--alone among those charged with
Election Day offenses--refused bail, Storrs ordered her held in the custody of a deputy
marshal until the grand jury had a chance to meet in January and consider issuing an
indictment. Anthony saw the commissioner's decision as a ticket to Supreme Court
review, and began making plans with her lawyers to file a petition for a writ of habeas
corpus. In a December 26 letter, Anthony wrote confidently, "We shall be rescued from
the Marshall hands on a Writ of Habeas Corpus--& case carried to the Supreme Court of
the U. S.--the speediest process of getting there." Already letters were coming in with
contributions to her "Defense Fund." She was anxious to put the money to use.

By early January, Anthony was already trying to make political hay out of her arrest. She
sent off "hundreds of papers" concerning her arrest to suffragist friends and politicians.
She still, however, found her situation difficult to comprehend: "I never dreamed of the U.
S. officers prosecuting me for voting--thought only that if I was refused I should bring
action against the inspectors-- But "Uncle Sam" waxes wroth with holy indignation at such
violation of his laws!!"

Anthony's attorney, Henry Selden asked a U. S. District Judge in Albany, Nathan Hall, to
issue a writ of habeas corpus ordering the release of Anthony from the marshal's custody.
Hall denied Selden's request and said he would "allow defendant to go to the Supreme
Court of the United States." The judge then raised Anthony's bail from $500 to $1000.
Anthony again refused to pay. Selden, however, decided to pay Anthony's bail with money
from his own bank account. In the courtroom hallway following the hearing Anthony's
other lawyer, John Van Voorhis, told Anthony that Selden's decision to pay her bail meant
"you've lost your chance to get your case before the Supreme Court." Shaken by the news,
Anthony confronted her lawyer, demanding that he explain why he paid her bail. "I could
not see a lady I respected put in jail," Selden answered.

A disappointed Anthony still had a trial to face. On January 24, 1873, a grand jury of
twenty men returned an indictment against Anthony charging her with "knowingly,
wrongfully, and unlawfully" voting for a member of Congress "without having a lawful
right to vote,....the said Susan B. Anthony being then and there a person of the female
sex." The trial was set for May.

On the Stump

Anthony saw the four months until her trial as an opportunity to educate the citizens of
Rochester and surrounding counties on the issue of women suffrage. She took to the
stump, speaking in town after town on the topic, "Is it a Crime for a Citizen of the United
States to Vote?"

By mid-May, Anthony's exhausting lecture tour had taken her to every one of the
twenty-nine post-office districts in Monroe County. To many in her audience, Anthony
was the picture of "sophisticated refinement and sincerity." The fifty-two-year-old
suffragist delivered her earnest speeches dressed in a gray silk dress a white lace collar. Her
smoothed hair was twisted neatly into a tight knot. She would look at her audience,
ranging from a few dozen to over a hundred persons, and begin:

Friends and Fellow-citizens: I stand before you to-night, under indictment for the
alleged crime of having voted at the last Presidential election, without having a
lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus
voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen's
right, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution,
beyond the power of any State to deny.
In her address, Anthony quoted the Declaration of Independence, the U. S. Constitution,
the New York Constitution, James Madison, Thomas Paine, the Supreme Court, and
several of the leading Radical Republican senators of the day to support her contention
that women had a legal right as citizens to vote. She argued that natural law, as well as a
proper interpretation of the Civil War Amendments, gave women the power to vote, as in
this passage suggesting that women, having been in a state of servitude, were enfranchised
by the recently enacted Fifteenth Amendment extending the vote to ex-slaves:
And yet one more authority; that of Thomas Paine, than whom not one of the
Revolutionary patriots more ably vindicated the principles upon which our
government is founded:
"The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other
rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce man to a state of
slavery; for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another; and he that
has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case...."
Is anything further needed to prove woman's condition of servitude sufficiently
orthodox to entitle her to the guaranties of the fifteenth amendment? Is there a man
who will not agree with me, that to talk of freedom without the ballot, is
mockery--is slavery--to the women of this Republic, precisely as New England's
orator Wendell Phillips, at the close of the late war, declared it to be to the newly
emancipated black men?
Anthony ended her hour-long lectures by frankly attempting to influence potential jurors
to vindicate her in her upcoming trial:
We appeal to the women everywhere to exercise their too long neglected "citizen's
right to vote." We appeal to the inspectors of elections everywhere to receive the
votes of all United States citizens as it is their duty to do. We appeal to United States
commissioners and marshals to arrest the inspectors who reject the names and votes
of United States citizens, as it is their duty to do, and leave those alone who, like our
eighth ward inspectors, perform their duties faithfully and well.

We ask the juries to fail to return verdicts of "guilty" against honest, law-abiding,
tax-paying United States citizens for offering their votes at our elections. Or against
intelligent, worthy young men, inspectors of elections, for receiving and counting
such citizens votes.

We ask the judges to render true and unprejudiced opinions of the law, and
wherever there is room for a doubt to give its benefit on the side of liberty and equal
rights to women, remembering that "the true rule of interpretation under our
national constitution, especially since its amendments, is that anything for human
rights is constitutional, everything against human right unconstitutional."

And it is on this line that we propose to fight our battle for the ballot-all peaceably,
but nevertheless persistently through to complete triumph, when all United States
citizens shall be recognized as equals before the law.

Anthony's lecture tour plainly worried her prosecutor, U. S. Attorney Richard Crowley. In a
letter to Senator Benjamin F. Butler, Anthony wrote, "I have just closed a canvass of this
county--from which my jurors are to be drawn--and I rather guess the U. S. District
Attorney--who is very bitter--will hardly find twelve men so ignorant on the citizen's
rights--as to agree on a verdict of Guilty." In May, however, Crowley convinced Judge
Ward Hunt (the recently appointed justice of the U. S. Supreme Court who would hear
Anthony's case) that Anthony had prejudiced potential jurors, and Hunt agreed to move
the trial out of Monroe County to Canandaigua in Ontario County. Hunt set a new
opening date for the trial of June 17.

Anthony responded to the judge's move by immediately launching a lecture tour in

Ontario County. Anthony spoke for twenty-one days in a row, finally concluding her tour
in Canandaigua, the county seat, on the night before the opening of her trial.

The Trial

Going into the June trial, Anthony and her lawyers were somewhat less optimistic about
the outcome than they had been a few months before. In April, the U. S. Supreme Court
handed down its first two major interpretations of the recently enacted Civil War
Amendments, rejected the claimed violations in both cases and construing key provisions
narrowly. Of special concern to Anthony was the Court's decision in Bradwell vs. Illinois,
where the Court had narrowly interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection
clause to uphold a state law that prohibited women from becoming lawyers. In an April 27
letter, Anthony anxiously sought out Benjamin Butler's views of the decision, noting that
"The whole Democratic press is jubilant over this infamous interpretation of the
amendments."

Even without the Supreme Court's narrow interpretation of the amendments, many
observers expressed skepticism about the strength of Anthony's case. An editorial in the
New York Times concluded:

"Miss Anthony is not in the remotest degree likely to gain her case, nor if it were
ever so desirable that women should vote, would hers be a good case. When so
important a change in our Constitution as she proposes is made, it will be done
openly and unmistakably, and not left to the subtle interpretation of a clause
adopted for a wholly different purpose."
In a lengthy response to the Times editorial, Elizabeth Cady Stanton quoted Judge Selden as
confidently telling Anthony, "there is law enough not only to protect you in the exercise of
your right to vote, but to enfranchise every woman in the land."

On June 17, 1873, Anthony, wearing a new bonnet faced with blue silk and draped with a
veil, walked up the steps of the Canandaigua courthouse on the opening day of her trial.
The second-floor courtroom was filled to capacity. The spectators included a former
president, Millard Fillmore, who had traveled over from Buffalo, where he practiced law.
Judge Ward Hunt sat behind the bench, looking stolid in his black broadcloth and neck
wound in a white neckcloth. Anthony described Hunt as "a small-brained, pale-faced,
prim-looking man, enveloped in a faultless black suit and a snowy white tie."

Richard Crowley made the opening statement for the prosecution:

We think, on the part of the Government, that there is no question about it either
one way or the other, neither a question of fact, nor a question of law, and that
whatever Miss Anthony's intentions may have been-whether they were good or
otherwise-she did not have a right to vote upon that question, and if she did vote
without having a lawful right to vote, then there is no question but what she is guilty
of violating a law of the United States in that behalf enacted by the Congress of the
United States.
The prosecution's chief witness was Beverly W. Jones, a twenty-five-year-old inspector of
elections. Jones testified that he witnessed Anthony cast a ballot on November 5 in
Rochester's Eighth Ward. Jones added he accepted Anthony's completed ballot and placed
it a ballot box. On cross-examination, Selden asked Jones if he had also been present
when Anthony registered four days earlier, and whether objections to Anthony's
registration had not been considered and rejected at that time. Jones agreed that was the
case, and that Anthony's name had been added to the voting rolls.

The main factual argument that the defense hoped to present was that Anthony reasonably
believed that she was entitled to vote, and therefore could not be guilty of the crime of
"knowingly" casting an illegal vote. To support this argument, Henry Selden called himself
as a witness to testify.
Before the last election, Miss Anthony called upon me for advice, upon the question
whether she was or was not a legal voter. I examined the question, and gave her my
opinion, unhesitatingly, that the laws and Constitution of the United States,
authorized her to vote, as well as they authorize any man to vote.
Selden then called Anthony as a witness, so she might testify as to her vote and her state of
mind on Election Day. District Attorney Crowley objected: "She is not a competent as a
witness on her own behalf." Judge Hunt sustained the objection, barring Anthony from
taking the stand. The defense rested.

The prosecution called to the stand John Pound, an Assistant United States Attorney who
had attended a January examination in which Anthony testified about her registration and
vote. Pound testified that Anthony testified at that time that she did not consult Selden
until after registering to vote. Selden, after conferring with Anthony, agreed that their
meeting took place immediately after her registration, rather than before as his own
testimony had suggested. On cross-examination, Pound admitted that Anthony had
testified at her examination that she had "not a particle" of doubt about her right as a
citizen to vote. With Pound's dismissal from the stand, the evidence closed and the legal
arguments began.

Selden opened his three-hour-long argument for Anthony by stressing that she was
prosecuted purely on account of her gender:

If the same act had been done by her brother under the same circumstances, the act
would have been not only innocent, but honorable and laudable; but having been
done by a woman it is said to be a crime. The crime therefore consists not in the act
done, but in the simple fact that the person doing it was a woman and not a man, I
believe this is the first instance in which a woman has been arraigned in a criminal
court, merely on account of her sex....
Selden stressed that the vote was essential to women receiving fair treatment from
legislatures: "Much has been done, but much more remains to be done by women. If they
had possessed the elective franchise, the reforms which have cost them a quarter of a
century of labor would have been accomplished in a year."

Central to Selden's argument that Anthony cast a legal vote was the recently enacted
Fourteenth Amendment:

It will be seen, therefore, that the whole subject, as to what should constitute the
"privileges and immunities" of the citizen being left to the States, no question, such
as we now present, could have arisen under the original constitution of the United
States. But now, by the fourteenth amendment, the United States have not only
declared what constitutes citizenship, both in the United States and in the several
States, securing the rights of citizens to "all persons born or naturalized in the
United States;" but have absolutely prohibited the States from making or enforcing "
any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United
States." By virtue of this provision, I insist that the act of Miss Anthony in voting
was lawful.
Finally, Selden insisted that even if the Fourteenth Amendment did not make Anthony's
vote legal, she could not be prosecuted because she acted in the good faith belief that her
vote was legal:
Miss Anthony believed, and was advised that she had a right to vote. She may also
have been advised, as was clearly the fact, that the question as to her right could not
be brought before the courts for trial, without her voting or offering to vote, and if
either was criminal, the one was as much so as the other. Therefore she stands now
arraigned as a criminal, for taking the only steps by which it was possible to bring
the great constitutional question as to her right, before the tribunals of the country
for adjudication. If for thus acting, in the most perfect good faith, with motives as
pure and impulses as noble as any which can find place in your honor's breast in the
administration of justice, she is by the laws of her country to be condemned as a
criminal, she must abide the consequences. Her condemnation, however, under such
circumstances, would only add another most weighty reason to those which I have
already advanced, to show that women need the aid of the ballot for their
protection.
After District Attorney Crowley offered his two-hour response for the prosecution, Judge
Hunt drew from his pocket a paper and began reading an opinion that he had apparently
prepared before the trial started. Hunt declared, "The Fourteenth Amendment gives no
right to a woman to vote, and the voting by Miss Anthony was in violation of the law."
The judge rejected Anthony's argument that her good faith precluded a finding that she
"knowingly" cast an illegal vote: "Assuming that Miss Anthony believed she had a right to
vote, that fact constitutes no defense if in truth she had not the right. She voluntarily gave
a vote which was illegal, and thus is subject to the penalty of the law." Hunt then surprised
Anthony and her attorney by directing a verdict of guilty: "Upon this evidence I suppose
there is no question for the jury and that the jury should be directed to find a verdict of
guilty."

In her diary that night Anthony would angrily describe the trial as "the greatest judicial
outrage history has ever recorded! We were convicted before we had a hearing and the trial
was a mere farce." During the entire trial, as Henry Selden pointed out, "No juror spoke a
word during the trial, from the time they were impaneled to the time they were
discharged." Had the jurors had an opportunity to speak, there is reason to believe that
Anthony would not have been convicted. A newspaper quoted one juror as saying, "Could
I have spoken, I should have answered 'not guilty,' and the men in the jury box would have
sustained me."

Sentencing

The next day Selden argued for a new trial on the ground that Anthony's constitutional
right to a trial by jury had been violated. Judge Hunt promptly denied the motion. Then,
before sentencing, Hunt asked, "Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not
be pronounced?" The exchange that followed stunned the crowd in the Canandaigua
courthouse:

"Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have
trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil
rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the
fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a
subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor's verdict,
doomed to political subjection under this, so-called, form of government."

Judge Hunt interrupted, "The Court cannot listen to a rehearsal of arguments the
prisoner's counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting."

But Anthony would not be deterred. She continued, "May it please your honor, I am not
arguing the question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence cannot, in justice, be
pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen's right to vote, is the denial of my right
of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the
taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers as an offender against law,
therefore, the denial of my sacred rights to life, liberty, property and-"

"The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on."

"But your honor will not deny me this one and only poor privilege of protest against this
high-handed outrage upon my citizen's rights. May it please the Court to remember that
since the day of my arrest last November, this is the first time that either myself or any
person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense before judge or jury-"

"The prisoner must sit down-the Court cannot allow it."

"All of my prosecutors, from the eighth ward corner grocery politician, who entered the
compliant, to the United States Marshal, Commissioner, District Attorney, District Judge,
your honor on the bench, not one is my peer, but each and all are my political sovereigns;
and had your honor submitted my case to the jury, as was clearly your duty, even then I
should have had just cause of protest, for not one of those men was my peer; but, native or
foreign born, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant, awake or asleep, sober or
drunk, each and every man of them was my political superior; hence, in no sense, my peer.
Even, under such circumstances, a commoner of England, tried before a jury of Lords,
would have far less cause to complain than should I, a woman, tried before a jury of men.
Even my counsel, the Hon. Henry R. Selden, who has argued my cause so ably, so
earnestly, so unanswerably before your honor, is my political sovereign. Precisely as no
disfranchised person is entitled to sit upon a jury, and no woman is entitled to the
franchise, so, none but a regularly admitted lawyer is allowed to practice in the courts, and
no woman can gain admission to the bar-hence, jury, judge, counsel, must all be of the
superior class.

"The Court must insist-the prisoner has been tried according to the established forms of
law."

"Yes, your honor, but by forms of law all made by men, interpreted by men, administered
by men, in favor of men, and against women; and hence, your honor's ordered verdict of
guilty; against a United States citizen for the exercise of "that citizen's right to vote," simply
because that citizen was a woman and not a man. But, yesterday, the same man made
forms of law, declared it a crime punishable with $1,000 fine and six months
imprisonment, for you, or me, or you of us, to give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread, or
a night's shelter to a panting fugitive as he was tracking his way to Canada. And every man
or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that wicked law,
reckless of consequences, and was justified in so doing. As then, the slaves who got their
freedom must take it over, or under, or through the unjust forms of law, precisely so, now,
must women, to get their right to a voice in this government, take it; and I have taken
mine, and mean to
take it at every possible opportunity."

"The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not allow another word."

"When I was brought before your honor for trial, I hoped for a broad and liberal
interpretation of the Constitution and its recent amendments, that should declare...equality
of rights the national guarantee to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. But
failing to get this justice-failing, even, to get a trial by a jury not of my peers-I ask not
leniency at your hands-but rather the full rigors of the law--"

"The Court must insist-"

Finally, Anthony sat down, only to be immediately ordered by Judge Hunt to rise again.
Hunt pronounced sentence: "The sentence of the Court is that you pay a fine of one
hundred dollars and the costs of the prosecution."

Anthony protested. "May it please your honor, I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust
penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a $10,000 debt, incurred by publishing my paper-
The Revolution -four years ago, the sole object of which was to educate all women to do
precisely as I have done, rebel against your manmade, unjust, unconstitutional forms of
law, that tax, fine, imprison and hang women, while they deny them the right of
representation in the government; and I shall work on with might and main to pay every
dollar of that honest debt, but not a penny shall go to this unjust claim. And I shall
earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old
revolutionary maxim, that "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."

Judge Hunt, in a move calculated to preclude any appeal to a higher court, ended the trial
by announcing, "Madam, the Court will not order you committed until the fine is paid."

2.2. U.S. Supreme Court v Brown V Board of Education

Brown v. Board of Education, case in which, on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court
ruled unanimously (9–0) that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth
Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits the states from denying equal protection
of the laws to any person within their jurisdictions. The decision declared that separate
educational facilities for white and African American students were inherently unequal. It
thus rejected as inapplicable to public education the “separate but equal” doctrine,
advanced by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), according to which laws
mandating separate public facilities for whites and African Americans do not violate the
equal protection clause if the facilities are approximately equal. Although the 1954 decision
strictly applied only to public schools, it implied that segregation was not permissible in
other public facilities. Considered one of the most important rulings in the Court’s history,
Brown v. Board of Education helped inspire the American civil rights movement of the late
1950s and ’60s.

In the late 1940s the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
began a concentrated effort to challenge the segregated school systems in various states,
including Kansas. There, in Topeka, the NAACP encouraged a number of African American
parents to try to enroll their children in all-white schools. All of the parents’ requests were
refused, including that of Oliver Brown. He was told that his daughter could not attend the
nearby white school and instead would have to enroll in an African American school far from her
home. The NAACP subsequently filed a class-action lawsuit. While it claimed that the education
(including facilities, teachers, etc.) offered to African Americans was inferior to that offered to
whites, the NAACP’s main argument was that segregation by its nature was a violation of the
Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. A U.S. district court heard Brown v. Board of
Education in 1951, and it ruled against the plaintiffs. While sympathetic to some of the plaintiffs’
claims, it determined that the schools were similar, and it cited the precedent set by Plessy and
Gong Lum v. Rice (1927), which upheld the segregation of Asian Americans in grade schools. The
NAACP then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County
An English class at Robert Russa Moton High School, Farmville, Virginia. A number of students
at the all-Black school were plaintiffs in the lawsuit Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward
County (1952).
In October 1952 the Court consolidated Brown with three other class-action school-segregation
lawsuits filed by the NAACP: Briggs v. Elliott (1951) in South Carolina, Davis v. County School Board
of Prince Edward County (1952) in Virginia, and Gebhart v. Belton (1952) in Delaware; there was also a
fifth case that was filed independently in the District of Columbia, Bolling v. Sharpe (1951). As
with Brown, U.S. district courts had decided against the plaintiffs in Briggs and Davis, ruling on the
basis of Plessy that they had not been deprived of equal protection because the schools they
attended were comparable to the all-white schools or would become so upon the completion of
improvements ordered by the district court. In Gebhart, however, the Delaware Supreme Court
affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the original plaintiffs’ right to equal protection had been
violated because the African American schools were inferior to the white schools in almost all
relevant respects. In Bolling v. Sharpe (1951), a U.S. district court held that school segregation did
not violate the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment (the equal protection clause was not
relevant since the Fourteenth Amendment only applies to states). The plaintiffs in Brown, Biggs,
and Davis appealed directly to the Supreme Court, while those in Gebhart and Bolling were each
granted certiorari (a writ for the reexamination of an action of a lower court).
Brown v. Board of Education was argued on December 9, 1952. The attorney for the plaintiffs was
Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court
(1967–91). The case was reargued on December 8, 1953, to address the question of whether the
framers of the Fourteenth Amendment would have understood it to be inconsistent with racial
segregation in public education. The 1954 decision found that the historical evidence bearing on
the issue was inconclusive.

2.3. We should all be feminists - Chimamanda Adichie

My brother Chuks and my best friend Ike are part of the organizing team, and so when they ask
me to come, I couldn’t say no. But I’m so happy to be here. What a fantastic team of people who
care about Africa. I feel so humble and so happy to be here.

And I’m also told that the most beautiful, most amazing little girl in the world is in the audience.
Her name is Kamzia Adichie and I want her to stand up… she’s my niece!
So, I would like to start by telling you about one of my greatest friends, Okuloma.
Okuloma lived on my street and looked after me like a big brother. If I liked a boy, I would ask
Okuloma’s opinion. Okuloma died in the notorious Sosoliso Plane Crash in Nigeria in December
of 2005. Almost exactly seven years ago.

Okuloma was a person I could argue with, laugh with, and truly talk to. He was also the first
person to call me a feminist. I was about fourteen, we were at his house, arguing. Both of us
bristling with half bit knowledge from books that we had read. I don’t remember what this
particular argument was about, but I remember that as I argued and argued, Okuloma looked at
me and said, “You know, you’re a feminist.”

It was not a compliment. I could tell from his tone, the same tone that you would use to say
something like “You’re a supporter of terrorism.”

I did not know exactly what this word “feminist” meant, and I did not want Okuloma to know
that I did not know, so I brushed it aside and I continued to argue. And the first thing I planned
to do when I got home was to look up the word “feminist” in the dictionary.

Now fast forward to some years later, I wrote a novel about a man who among other things beats
his wife and whose story doesn’t end very well. While I was promoting the novel in Nigeria, a
journalist, a nice well-meaning man, told me he wanted to advise me.

And for the Nigerians here, I’m sure we’re all familiar with how quick our people are to give
unsolicited advice. He told me that people were saying that my novel was feminist and his advice
to me — and he was shaking his head sadly as he spoke — was that I should never call myself a
feminist because feminists are women who are unhappy because they cannot find husbands. So I
decided to call myself “a happy feminist.”

Then an academic, a Nigerian woman told me that feminism was not our culture and that
feminism wasn’t African, and that I was calling myself a feminist because I had been corrupted by
“Western books.” Which amused me, because a lot of my early readings were decidedly
unfeminist. I think I must have read every single Mills & Boon romance published before I was
sixteen. And each time I tried to read those books called “the feminist classics” I’d get bored and
I really struggled to finish them.
But anyway, since feminism was un-African, I decided that I would now call myself “a happy
African feminist.” At some point I was a happy African feminist who does not hate men and
who likes lip gloss and who wears high-heels for herself but not for men. Of course a lot of these
was tongue-in-cheek, but that word feminist is so heavy with baggage, negative baggage. You
hate men, you hate bras, you hate African culture, that sort of thing.

Now here’s a story from my childhood. When I was in primary school, my teacher said at the
beginning of term that she would give the class a test and whoever got the highest score would
be the class monitor. Now, class monitor was a big deal. If you were a class monitor, you got to
write down the names of noise makers, which was having enough power of its own. But my
teacher would also give you a cane to hold in your hand while you walk around and patrol the
class for noise makers.

Now of course you’re not actually allowed to use the cane. But it was an exciting prospect for the
nine-year-old me. I very much wanted to be the class monitor. And I got the highest score on the
test.

Then, to my surprise, my teacher said that the monitor had to be a boy. She’d forgotten to make
that clear earlier because she assumed it was… obvious. A boy had the second highest score on
the test and he would be monitor.

Now what was even more interesting about this is that the boy was a sweet, gentle soul who had
no interest in patrolling the class with the cane, while I was full of ambition to do so. But I was
female, and he was male and so he became the class monitor.

And I’ve never forgotten that incident. I often make the mistake of thinking that something that
is obvious to me is just as obvious to everyone else. Now, take my dear friend Louis for example.
Louis is a brilliant, progressive man, and we would have conversations and he would tell me, “I
don’t know what you mean by things being different or harder for women. Maybe in the past, but
not now.”

And I didn’t understand how Louis could not see what seems so self-evident. Then one evening,
in Lagos, Louis and I went out with friends. And for people here who are not familiar with
Lagos, there’s that wonderful Lagos’ fixture, the sprinkling of energetic man who hung around
outside establishments and very dramatically “help” you park your car. I was impressed with the
particular theatrics of the man who found us a parking spot that evening, and so as we were
leaving, I decided to leave him a tip.

I opened my bag, put my hand inside my bag, brought out my money that I had earned from
doing my work, and I gave it to the man.
And he, this man who was very grateful, and very happy, took the money from me, looked across
at Louis, and said “Thank you, sir!”

Louis looked at me, surprised, and asked “Why is he thanking me? I didn’t give him the money.”

Then I saw realization dawned on Louis’ face. The man believed that whatever money I had had
ultimately come from Louis. Because Louis is a man.

The men and women are different. We have different hormones, we have different sexual organs,
we have different biological abilities, women can have babies, men can’t. At least not yet. Men
have testosterone and are in general physically stronger than women. There’s slightly more
women than men in the world, about 52% of the world’s population is female. But most of the
positions of power and prestige are occupied by men.

The late Kenyan Nobel Peace Laureate, Wangari Maathai, put it simply and well when she said:
“The higher you go, the fewer women there are.”

In the recent US elections we kept hearing of the Lilly Ledbetter law, and if we go beyond the
nicely alliterative name of that law, it was really about a man and a woman doing the same job
being equally qualified and the man being paid more because he’s a man.

So in the literal way, men rule the world, and this made sense a thousand years ago because
human beings lived then in a world in which physical strength was the most important attribute
for survival. The physically stronger person was more likely to lead, and men, in general, are
physically stronger. Of course there are many exceptions.

But today we live in a vastly different world. The person more likely to lead is not the physically
stronger person, it is the more creative person, the more intelligent person, the more innovative
person, and there are no hormones for those attributes. A man is as likely as a woman to be
intelligent, to be creative, to be innovative. We have evolved; but it seems to me that our ideas of
gender have not evolved.

Some weeks ago I walked into a lobby of one of the best Nigerian hotels. I thought about
naming the hotel, but I thought I probably shouldn’t, and a guard at the entrance stopped me and
ask me annoying questions, because their automatic assumption is that a Nigerian female walking
into a hotel alone is a sex worker. And by the way, why do these hotels focus on the ostensible
supply rather than the demand for sex workers?

In Lagos I cannot go alone into many “reputable” bars and clubs. They just don’t let you in if
you’re a woman alone, you have to be accompanied by a man. Each time I walk into a Nigerian
restaurant with a man, the waiter greets the man and ignores me. The waiters are products…at
this some women felt like “Yes! I thought that!”

The waiters are products of a society that has taught them that men are more important than
women. And I know that waiters don’t intend any harm. But it’s one thing to know intellectually
and quite another to feel it emotionally. Each time they ignore me, I feel invisible. I feel upset. I
want to tell them I’m just as human as the man, that I’m just as worthy of acknowledgement.
These are little things, but sometimes it’s the little things that sting the most.

And not long ago I wrote an article about what it means to be young and female in Lagos, and
the printers told me “It was so angry.” Of course it was angry!

I am angry. Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. We should all be angry. Anger has a
long history of bringing about positive change; but in addition to being angry, I’m also hopeful.
Because I believe deeply in the ability of human beings to make and remake themselves for the
better.

Gender matters everywhere in the world, but I want to focus on Nigeria and on Africa in general,
because it is where I know, and because it is where my heart is. And I would like today to ask that
we begin to dream about and plan for a different world, a fairer world; a world of happier men
and happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: we must raise our
daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently.

We do a great disservice to boys on how we raise them; we stifle the humanity of boys. We define
masculinity in a very narrow way, masculinity becomes this hard, small cage and we put boys
inside the cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear. We teach boys to be afraid of weakness, of
vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian speak,
“hard man!”

In secondary school, a boy and a girl, both of them teenagers, both of them with the same
amount of pocket money, would go out and then the boy would be expected always to pay, to
prove his masculinity. And yet we wonder why boys are more likely to steal money from their
parents.

What if both boys and girls were raised not to link masculinity with money? What if the attitude
was not “the boy has to pay” but rather “whoever has more should pay”? Now of course because
of that historical advantage, it is mostly men who will have more today, but if we start raising
children differently, then in fifty years, in a hundred years, boys will no longer have the pressure
of having to prove this masculinity.
But by far the worst thing we do to males, by making them feel that they have to be hard, is that
we leave them with very fragile egos. The more “hard-man” the man feels compelled to be, the
weaker his ego is.

And then we do a much greater disservice to girls because we raise them to cater to the fragile
egos of men. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller, we say to girls,
“You can have ambition, but not too much.” “You should aim to be successful, but not too
successful, otherwise you would threaten the man.” If you are the breadwinner in your
relationship with a man, you have to pretend that you’re not, especially in public, otherwise you
will emasculate him.

But what if we question the premise itself, why should a woman’s success be a threat to a man?
What if we decide to simply dispose of that word, and I don’t think there’s an English word I
dislike more than “emasculation.” A Nigerian acquaintance once asked me if I was worried that
men would be intimidated by me.

I was not worried at all. In fact it had not occurred to me to be worried because a man who
would be intimidated by me is exactly the kind of man I would have no interest in. But still I was
really struck by this. Because I’m female, I’m expected to aspire to marriage; I’m expected to
make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important.

A marriage can be a good thing; it can be a source of joy and love and mutual support. But why
do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? I know a woman who
decided to sell her house because she didn’t want to intimidate a man who might marry her. I
know an unmarried woman in Nigeria who, when she goes to conferences, wears a wedding ring
because according to her, she wants the other participants in the conference to “give her
respect.”

I know young women who are under so much pressure from family, from friends, even from
work to get married and they’re pushed to make terrible choices. A woman at a certain age who is
unmarried, our society teaches her to see it as a deep, personal failure. And a man at a certain age
who is unmarried we just think he hasn’t come around to making his pick.

It’s easy for us to say, “Oh but women can just say no to all of this”. But the reality is more difficult and
more complex. We’re all social beings. We internalize ideas from our socialization. Even the
language we use in talking about marriage and relationships illustrates this. The language of
marriage is often the language of ownership rather than the language of partnership.
We use the word “respect” to mean something that a woman shows a man but often not
something a man shows a woman. Both men and women in Nigeria will say – and this is an
expression I’m very amused by — “I did it for peace in my marriage.”

Now when men say it, it is usually about something that they should not be doing anyway.
Sometimes they say it to their friends, it’s something to say to their friends in a kind of fondly
exasperated way, you know, something that ultimately proves how masculine they are, how
needed, how loved — “Oh my wife said I can’t go to club every night, so for peace in my
marriage, I do it only on weekends.”

Now when a woman says, “I did it for peace in my marriage,” she’s usually talking about having
giving up a job, a dream, a career. We teach females that in relationships, compromise is what
women do. We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for job or for accomplishments,
which I think could be a good thing, but for attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be
sexual beings in the way that boys are. If we have sons, we don’t mind knowing about our sons’
girlfriends. But our daughters’ boyfriends? God forbid.

But of course when the time is right, we expect those girls to bring back the perfect man to be
their husbands. We police girls, we praise girls for virginity, but we don’t praise boys for virginity,
and it’s always made me wonder how exactly this is supposed to work out because…I mean, the
loss of virginity is usually a process that involves…

Recently a young woman was gang raped in a University in Nigeria, I think some of us know
about that. And the response of many young Nigerians, both male and female, was something
along the lines of this: “Yes, rape is wrong. But what is a girl doing in a room with four boys?”

Now if we can forget the horrible inhumanity of that response, these Nigerians have been raised
to think of women as inherently guilty, and have been raised to expect so little of men that the
idea of men as savage beings without any control is somehow acceptable.

We teach girls shame. “Close your legs”, “Cover yourself ”. We make them feel as though by
being born female they’re already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who
cannot see they have desire. They grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up
to be women who cannot see what they truly think, and they grow up — and this is the worst
thing we did to girls — they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an art form.

I know a woman who hates domestic work, she just hates it, but she pretends that she likes it,
because she’s been taught that to be “good wife material” she has to be — to use that Nigerian
word — very “homely.” And then she got married, and after a while her husband’s family began
to complain that she had changed. Actually she had not changed, she just got tired of pretending.
The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we
are. Now imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual
selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations. Boys and girls are undeniably different
biologically, but socialization exaggerates the differences and then it becomes a self-fulfilling
process.

Now take cooking for example. Today women in general are more likely to do the house work
than men, the cooking and cleaning. But why is that? Is it because women are born with a
cooking gene? Or because over years they have been socialized to see cooking as their rule?
Actually I was going to say that maybe women are born with a cooking gene, until I remember
that the majority of the famous cooks in the world, whom we give the fancy title of “chefs,” are
men.

I used to look up to my grandmother who was a brilliant, brilliant woman, and wonder how she
would have been if she had the same opportunity as men when she was growing up. Now today,
there are many more opportunities for women than there were during my grandmother’s time
because of changes in policy, changes in law, all of which are very important. But what matters
even more is our attitude, our mindset, what we believe and what we value about gender.

What if in raising children we focus on ability instead of gender? What if in raising children we
focus on interest instead of gender? I know a family who have a son and a daughter, both of
whom are brilliant at school, who are wonderful, lovely children. When the boy is hungry, the
parents say to the girl “Go and cook Indomie noodles for your brother.” Now the daughter
doesn’t particularly like to cook Indomie noodles, but she’s a girl, and so she has to.

Now, what if the parents, from the beginning, taught both the boy and the girl to cook Indomie?
Cooking, by the way, is a very useful skill for boys to have. I’ve never thought it made sense to
leave such a crucial thing, the ability to nourish oneself, in the hands of others.

I know a woman who has the same degree and the same job as her husband, when they get back
from work she does most of the house work, which I think is true for many marriages. But what
struck me about them was that whenever her husband changed the baby’s diaper, she said “thank
you” to him.

Now what if she saw this as perfectly normal and natural that he should, in fact, care for his
child? I’m trying to unlearn many of the lessons of gender that I internalized when I was growing
up. But I sometimes still feel very vulnerable in the face of gender expectations.

The first time I taught a writing class in graduate school I was worried. I wasn’t worried about the
material I would teach because I was well-prepared and I was going to teach what I enjoy
teaching. Instead, I was worried about what to wear. I wanted to be taken seriously. I knew that
because I was female I will automatically have to prove my worth. And I was worried if I looked
too feminine I would not be taken seriously. I really wanted to wear my shiny lip gloss and my
girly skirt, but I decided not to.

Instead, I wore a very serious, very manly, and very ugly suit. Because the sad truth is that when it
comes to appearance we start off with man as the standard, as the norm. If a man is getting ready
for a business meeting he doesn’t worry about looking too masculine and therefore not being
taken for granted. If a woman has to get ready for business meeting, she has to worry about
looking too feminine, and what it says and whether or not she will be taken seriously.

I wish I had not worn that ugly suit that day. I’ve actually banished it from my closet, by the way.
Had I then the confidence that I have now to be myself my students would have benefited even
more from my teaching, because I would have been more comfortable, and more fully and more
truly myself. I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femaleness and for my femininity.
And I want to be respected in all of my femaleness because I deserve to be.

Gender is not an easy conversation to have. For both men and women, to bring up gender,
sometimes encounters almost immediate resistance. I can imagine some people here are actually
thinking “Women, true to selves? ” Some of the men here might be thinking “Okay, all of this is
interesting, but I don’t think like that.” And that is part of the problem.

That many men do not actively think about gender or notice gender, is part of the problem of
gender. That many men, say, like my friend Louis, that everything is fine now. And that many
men do nothing to change it. If you are a man and you walk into a restaurant with a woman and
the waiter greets only you, does it occur to you to ask the waiter “Why haven’t you greeted her?”

Because gender can be…Actually we may repose part of a longer version of this talk. So, because
gender can be a very uncomfortable conversation to have, there are very easy ways to close it, to
close the conversation. So some people will bring up evolutionary biology and apes, how, you
know, female apes bow down to male apes and that sort of thing.

But the point is we’re not apes. Apes also live on trees and have earth worms for breakfast but we
don’t. Some people will say, “Well, poor men also have a hard time.” And this is true. But that is
not what this… But this is not what this conversation is about. Gender and class are different
forms of oppression. I actually learned quite a bit about systems of oppression and how they can
be blind to one another by talking to black men.

I was once talking to a black man about gender and he said to me, “Why do you have to say ‘my
experience as a woman’? why can’t it be ‘your experience as a human being’?” Now this was the
same man who would often talk about his experience as a black man.
Gender matters. Men and women experience the world differently. Gender colors the way we
experience the world. But we can change that.

Some people will say, “Oh but women have the real power, bottom power.” And for
non-Nigerians, bottom power is an expression which — I suppose means something like a
woman who uses her sexuality to get favors from men. But bottom power is not power at all.
Bottom power means that a woman simply has a good root to tap into, from time to time,
somebody else’s power. And then of course we have to wonder what happens when that
somebody else is in a bad mood, or sick, or impotent.

Some people will say that a woman being subordinate to a man is our culture. But culture is
constantly changing. I have beautiful twin nieces who are fifteen and live in Lagos, if they had
been born a hundred years ago they would have been taken away and killed. Because it was our
culture, it was our culture to kill twins.

So what is the point of culture? I mean there’s the decorative, the dancing…but also, culture
really is about preservation and continuity of a people. In my family, I am the child who is most
interested in the story of who we are, in our tradition, in the knowledge about ancestral lands. My
brothers are not as interested as I am. But I cannot participate, I cannot go to their meetings, I
cannot have a say. Because I’m female.

Culture does not make people, people make culture. So if it’s in fact true that the full humanity of
women is not our culture, then we must make it our culture. I think very often of my dear friend
Okuloma, may he and all the others that passed away in that Sosoliso Crash continue to rest in
peace. He will always be remembered by those of us who loved him. And he was right that day
many years ago when he called me a feminist. I am a feminist. And when I looked up the word in
the dictionary that day, this is what it said: Feminist, a person who believes in the social, political
and economic equality of the sexes.

My great grandmother, from the stories I’ve heard, was a feminist. She ran away from the house
of the man she did not want to marry, and ended up marrying the man of her choice. She
refused, she protested, she spoke up whenever she felt she’s being deprived of access, of land,
that sort of thing. My great grandmother did not know that word “feminist,” but it doesn’t mean
that she wasn’t one. More of us should reclaim that word.

My own definition of feminist is: a feminist is a man or a woman who says – a feminist is a man
or a woman who says “Yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today, and we must fix it. We
must do better.”
The best feminist I know is my brother Kenny. He’s also a kind, good-looking, lovely man, and
he’s very masculine.

SUMMARY:
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s talk titled “We Should All Be Feminists” addresses the importance
of gender equality and challenges societal norms and expectations surrounding gender roles.
Here are the key points from her talk:

1. Personal Connection: Adichie starts by mentioning her personal connections to the event and
introduces her friend Okuloma, who first called her a feminist when she was a teenager.

2. Misconceptions About Feminism: Adichie discusses the misconceptions about feminism that
she encountered, such as the belief that feminists are unhappy women who cannot find
husbands.

3. Redefining Feminism: She decides to call herself a “happy African feminist” and emphasizes
that feminism should not be seen as a negative or divisive term. She advocates for a feminism
that embraces both men and women.

4. Gender Inequality: Adichie shares a childhood story about gender inequality, where she lost the
opportunity to become a class monitor because she was a girl. This experience highlights early
gender bias.

5. Gender Disparities Persist: She points out that even today, despite progress, gender disparities
persist, with men holding most positions of power and prestige.

6. The Power of Evolution: Adichie argues that our understanding of leadership and success
needs to evolve. Physical strength is no longer the most important attribute for survival in the
modern world.

7. Gender Stereotypes: Adichie highlights how gender stereotypes are deeply ingrained in society,
leading to discrimination and biased expectations.

8. Invisibility of Women: Adichie shares her experiences of feeling invisible in public spaces,
where waiters and others often prioritize men over women.

9. Pressure on Women: Women are pressured to conform to gender norms, such as the
expectation to marry and make life choices that prioritize men’s comfort.
10. Silencing Women: Girls are taught to shrink themselves, to silence their desires, and to
pretend to fit societal expectations, which can lead to a lack of authenticity.

11. Raising Children Differently: Adichie suggests raising children differently by focusing on their
abilities and interests rather than imposing gender-based roles and expectations.

12. Unapologetic Femininity: She emphasizes the importance of embracing femininity and
rejecting the need to conform to male norms, using her personal story of wearing an
uncomfortable suit to be taken seriously.

13. Challenging Gender Norms: Adichie encourages society to challenge traditional gender
norms and expectations by recognizing that culture is not static and can change.

14. Feminism Defined: Adichie offers a definition of feminism as “a person who believes in the
social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.”

15. Reclaiming Feminism: She encourages people to reclaim the word “feminist” and emphasizes
that it is about acknowledging gender inequality and working to create a more equitable world.

16. The Role of Men: Adichie highlights the importance of men being active allies in the fight for
gender equality and the need to dismantle harmful stereotypes.

2.4 Child Marriage by M. K. Gandhi

Much as I wish that I had not to write this chapter, I know that I shall have to swallow many such
bitter draughts in the course of this narrative. And I cannot do otherwise, if I claim to be a
worshiper of Truth. It is my painful duty to have to record here my marriage at the age of
thirteen. As I see the youngsters of the same age about me who are under my care, and think of
my own marriage, I am inclined to pity myself and to congratulate them on having escaped my
lot. I can see no moral argument in support of such a preposterously early marriage.

Let the reader make no mistake. I was married, not betrothed. For in Kathiawad there are two
distinct rites: betrothal and marriage. Betrothal is a preliminary promise on the part of the
parents of the boy and the girl to join them in marriage, and it is not inviolable. The death of the
boy entails no widowhood on the girl. It is an agreement purely between the parents, and the
children have no concern with it. Often they are not even informed of it. It appears that I was
betrothed thrice, though without my knowledge. I was told that two girls chosen for me had died
in turn, and therefore I infer that I was betrothed three times. I have a faint recollection,
however, that the third betrothal took place in my seventh year. But I do not recollect having
been informed about it. In the present chapter I am talking about my marriage, of which I have
the clearest recollection.
It will be remembered that we were three brothers. The first was already married. The elders
decided to marry my second brother, who was two or three years my senior, a cousin, possibly a
year older, and me, all at the same time. In doing so there was no thought of our welfare, much
less our wishes. It was purely a question of their own convenience and economy.
Marriage among Hindus is no simple matter. The parents of the bride and the bridegroom often
bring themselves to ruin over it. They waste their substance, they waste their time. Months are
taken up over the preparations in making clothes and ornaments and in preparing budgets for
dinners. Each tries to outdo the other in the number and variety of courses to be prepared.
Women, whether they have a voice or no, sing themselves hoarse, even get ill, and disturb the
peace of their neighbours. These in their turn quietly put up with all the turmoil and bustle, all
the dirt and filth, representing the remains of the feasts, because they know that a time will come
when they also will be behaving in the same manner.
It would be better, thought my elders, to have all this bother over at one and the same time. Less
expense and greater eclat. For money could be freely spent if it had only to be spent once instead
of thrice. My father and my uncle were both old, and we were the last children they had to marry.
It is likely that they wanted to have the last best time of their lives. In view of all these
considerations, a triple wedding was decided upon, and as I have said before, months were taken
up in preparation for it.
It was only through these preparations that we got warning of the coming event. I do not think it
meant to me anything more than the prospect of good clothes to wear, drum beating, marriage
processions, rich dinners and a strange girl to play with. The carnal desire came later. I propose to
draw a curtain over my shame, except for a few details worth recording. To these I shall come
later. But even they have little to do with the central idea I have kept before me in writing this
story.
So my brother and I were both taken to Porbandar from Rajkot. There are some amusing details
of the preliminaries to the final drama - e.g., smearing our bodies all over with turmeric paste but
I must omit them.
My father was a Diwan, but nevertheless a servant, and all the more so because he was in favour
with the Thakore Saheb. The latter would not let him go until the last moment. And when he did
so, he ordered for my father special stage coaches, reducing the journey by two days. But the fates
had willed otherwise. Porbandar is 120 miles from Rajkot - a cart journey of five days. My father
did the distance in three, but the coach toppled over in the third stage, and he sustained severe
injuries. He arrived bandaged all over. Both his and our interest in the coming event was half
destroyed, but the ceremony had to be gone through. For how could the marriage dates be
changed? However, I forgot my grief over my father's injuries in the childish amusement of the
wedding.
I was devoted to my parents. But no less was I devoted to the passions that flesh is heir to. I had
yet to learn that all happiness and pleasure should be sacrificed in devoted service to my parents.
And yet, as though by way of punishment for my desire for pleasures, an incident happened,
which has ever since rankled in my mind and which I will relate later. Nishkulanand sings:
'Renunciation of objects, without the renunciation of desires, is short-lived, however hard you
may try'. Whenever I sing this song or hear it sung, this bitter untoward incident, rushes to my
memory and fills me with shame.
My father put on a brave face in spite of his injuries, and took full part in the wedding. As I think
of it, I can even today call before my mind's eye the places where he sat as he went through the
different details of the ceremony. Little did I dream then that one day I should severely criticize
my father for having married me as a child. Everything on that day seemed to me right and
proper and pleasing. There was also my own eagerness to get married. And as everything that my
father did then struck me as beyond reproach, the recollection of those things is fresh in my
memory. I can picture to myself, even today, how we sat on our wedding dais, how we performed
the Saptapadi1,how we, the newly wedded husband and wife, put the sweet Kansar2 into each
other's mouth, and how we began to live together. And oh! that first night. Two innocent
children all unwittingly hurled themselves into the ocean of life. My brother's wife had
thoroughly coached me about my behaviour on the first night. I do not know who had coached
my wife. I have never asked her about it, nor am I inclined to do so now. The reader may be sure
that we were too nervous to face each other. We were certainly too shy. How was I to talk to her,
and what was I to say? The coaching could not carry me far. But no coaching is really necessary
in such matters. The impressions of the former birth are potent enough to make all coaching
superfluous. We gradually began to know each other, and to speak freely together. We were the
same age. but I took no time in assuming the authority of a husband.
2.5. Gender Equality Speech at the United Nations by Emma Watson
Today we are launching a campaign called “HeForShe.”

I am reaching out to you because I need your help. We want to end gender inequality—and to do
that we need everyone to be involved.
This is the first campaign of its kind at the UN: we want to try and galvanize as many men and
boys as possible to be advocates for gender equality. And we don’t just want to talk about it, but
make sure it is tangible.
I was appointed six months ago and the more I have spoken about feminism the more I have
realized that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. If
there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop.
For the record, feminism by definition is: “The belief that men and women should have equal
rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the
sexes.”
I started questioning gender-based assumptions when at eight I was confused at being called
“bossy,” because I wanted to direct the plays we would put on for our parents—but the boys
were not.
When at 14 I started being sexualized by certain elements of the press.
When at 15 my girlfriends started dropping out of their sports teams because they didn’t want to
appear “muscly.”
When at 18 my male friends were unable to express their feelings.
I decided I was a feminist and this seemed uncomplicated to me. But my recent research has
shown me that feminism has become an unpopular word.
Apparently I am among the ranks of women whose expressions are seen as too strong, too
aggressive, isolating, anti-men and, unattractive.
Why is the word such an uncomfortable one?
I am from Britain and think it is right that as a woman I am paid the same as my male
counterparts. I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body. I
think it is right that women be involved on my behalf in the policies and decision-making of my
country. I think it is right that socially I am afforded the same respect as men. But sadly I can say
that there is no one country in the world where all women can expect to receive these rights.
No country in the world can yet say they have achieved gender equality.
These rights I consider to be human rights but I am one of the lucky ones. My life is a sheer
privilege because my parents didn’t love me less because I was born a daughter. My school did
not limit me because I was a girl. My mentors didn’t assume I would go less far because I might
give birth to a child one day. These influencers were the gender equality ambassadors that made
me who I am today. They may not know it, but they are the inadvertent feminists who are
changing the world today. And we need more of those.
And if you still hate the word—it is not the word that is important but the idea and the ambition
behind it. Because not all women have been afforded the same rights that I have. In fact,
statistically, very few have been.
In 1995, Hilary Clinton made a famous speech in Beijing about women’s rights. Sadly many of
the things she wanted to change are still a reality today.
But what stood out for me the most was that only 30 per cent of her audience were male. How
can we affect change in the world when only half of it is invited or feel welcome to participate in
the conversation?
Men—I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is
your issue too.
Because to date, I’ve seen my father’s role as a parent being valued less by society despite my
needing his presence as a child as much as my mother’s.
I’ve seen young men suffering from mental illness unable to ask for help for fear it would make
them look less “macho”—in fact in the UK suicide is the biggest killer of men between 20-49
years of age; eclipsing road accidents, cancer and coronary heart disease. I’ve seen men made
fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success. Men don’t have the
benefits of equality either.
We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes but I can see that that
they are and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence.
If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted women won’t feel compelled to be
submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled.
Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to
be strong… It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum not as two opposing sets of
ideals.
If we stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by what we
are—we can all be freer and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom.
I want men to take up this mantle. So their daughters, sisters and mothers can be free from
prejudice but also so that their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human too—reclaim
those parts of themselves they abandoned and in doing so be a more true and complete version
of themselves.
You might be thinking who is this Harry Potter girl? And what is she doing up on stage at the
UN. It’s a good question and trust me, I have been asking myself the same thing. I don’t know if I
am qualified to be here. All I know is that I care about this problem. And I want to make it
better.
And having seen what I’ve seen—and given the chance—I feel it is my duty to say something.
English Statesman Edmund Burke said: “All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for
enough good men and women to do nothing.”
In my nervousness for this speech and in my moments of doubt I’ve told myself firmly—if not
me, who, if not now, when. If you have similar doubts when opportunities are presented to you I
hope those words might be helpful.
Because the reality is that if we do nothing it will take 75 years, or for me to be nearly a hundred
before women can expect to be paid the same as men for the same work. 15.5 million girls will be
married in the next 16 years as children. And at current rates it won’t be until 2086 before all
rural African girls will be able to receive a secondary education.
If you believe in equality, you might be one of those inadvertent feminists I spoke of earlier.
And for this I applaud you.
We are struggling for a uniting word but the good news is we have a uniting movement. It is
called HeForShe. I am inviting you to step forward, to be seen to speak up, to be the "he" for
"she". And to ask yourself if not me, who? If not now, when?
Thank you.
 MODULE 3
Literature for Analytical Study

3.1 The Greek Interpreter

"The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter" begins with a discussion between Sherlock Holmes
and Dr. Watson about their hereditary traits. Previously, Watson has always assumed that Holmes
is unique, an only child, with singular capabilities. Holmes, though, is quick to set his friend
straight, for Sherlock has an older brother named Mycroft.

Sherlock considers that the intellect of Mycroft outstrips his own, but the detective also
recognises that Mycroft doesn’t have the energy to go along with the intellect; with Mycroft
perfectly comfortable to be considered wrong, rather than make the effort to prove himself right.

Sherlock, though, has on occasion sought out the advice of his brother; with Sherlock visiting
Mycroft at the Diogenes Club, with the guidance normally proving accurate.

This time though, Sherlock has been sought by Mycroft, for Mr Meles, a Greek interpreter and
neighbor of Mycroft, had sought the advice of Mycroft.

A man by the name of Harold Latimer had sought out the services of Mr Meles, to act as a Greek
interpreter. Mr Meles had been collected in a blacked-out cab, and although told the destination
was to be Kensington, the journey lasted for longer than it should. Latimer also produced a
bludgeon, with the implicit threat of violence.

Latimer would tell Mr Meles that he would be rewarded for his services, but also demanded
future silence from the interpreter.

The blacked-out cab would eventually, after a couple of hours, pull up at a large, expensively
decorated house.

At the house, Mr Meles encounters a second man, Wilson Kemp, and soon there is more
evidence about just how irregular this interpreting job was going to be. A third man was brought
into the presence of the Greek interpreter, but initially, the mouth of this man was covered in
sticking plaster.

Mr Meles was asked to ask the anonymous man certain questions, but as Mr Meles realised that
Latimer and Kemp were both ignorant of the Greek language, the interpreter managed to
interpose his own questions as well.
From his own questions Mr Meles discovered that the captive man was named Paul Kratides, a
Greek man who Latimer and Kemp were trying to make sign some papers. Paul Kratides had
been in England for three weeks, but had no idea where he currently was.

At that moment the questioning was interrupted when a woman entered the room. This woman
immediately called out to Kratides, calling him by his first name. Paul Kratides then ripped off his
mouth guard, and called the woman Sophy.

Paul and Sophy were quickly separated, and then Mr Meles was ushered from house into the
blacked-out cab again. Another long drive ensued, but rather than being returned home, Mr
Meles was dropped off on Wandsworth Common. The Greek interpreter didn’t dawdle though,
and immediately went to gain the advice of Mycroft Holmes.

Advertisements had been placed in the papers, the ads asking for information about a Greek lady
staying in England, or a man named Paul Katrides.

The problem was now placed before Sherlock Holmes, and the detective sends off a few
telegrams, but it is Mycroft who brings the next development, for he has had an answer to the
placed newspaper notices. A Mr Davenport says that Sophy is staying at a house known as the
Myrtles in Beckenham.
With some urgency, plans are made to go to Beckenham, and it is decided to get Inspector
Gregson to join them. It is also thought a good idea to collect Mr Meles, in case a Greek
interpreter is required.

When the party arrives at the Meles residence though, they find that the Greek interpreter has
already been picked up by a cab; something that doesn’t bode well for the safety of the
interpreter.

When the party of the Holmes brothers, Watson and Gregson arrive at the Myrtles it appears that
the house has been abandoned; evidence shows the departure of a heavily laden coach.

The house though, is not as quiet as empty as it appears, as breaking through a locked door, the
party find Paul Kratides and Mr Meles; both men have been gassed with charcoal fumes. The
rescue proves too late for Paul Kratides, but the attention of Dr Watson sees Mr Meles saved.

The rescue has also come too late to arrest Latimer and Kemp, or rescue Sophy. The gaps in
Sherlock Holmes’ knowledge of the case are soon filled in.
Friends had warned Paul Kratides about the influence that Latimer was exerting over Sophy, and
the brother had traveled to England from Greece to rectify that situation. Paul Kratides had
though become a prisoner of Latimer, and the latter had tried to make the former sign over
Sophy’s property; of course, Paul Kratides had refused to do so, ultimately leading to his own
 death.
There is a footnote to the adventure for news of the death of two Englishmen, Latimer and
Kemp, in Hungary. It appears that the two have killed each other during a fight; but Sherlock
Holmes has a strong inkling that the deaths of the two men have been caused by Sophy; the sister
getting her revenge.

3.2. The Jury of her Peers by Susan Glaspell

Martha Hale, a farmwife in a rural area in the early 1900s, is called away from her morning
housework to accompany Mrs. Peters to the isolated farmhouse of John and Minnie Wright. Mr.
Henderson, the young county attorney, Mr. Hale, and Mr. Peters, the sheriff, have taken Minnie into
custody after someone strangled her husband in their bed. Mr. Hale had stopped by the day before
to talk to John and found Minnie rocking in her chair, quiet and distracted. She claims that she slept
through her husband’s murder. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are tasked with gathering necessities for
Minnie while the men search the crime scene.
At the Wrights’ farmhouse, the men criticize the messy kitchen, dismiss women’s work as trivial, and
go upstairs to the bedroom. The kitchen is in disarray because events interrupted Minnie’s
housekeeping. The damage is not insignificant. Because no one kept the stove burning that night, all
but one of the jars of fruit Minnie worked to preserve have frozen and shattered. Mrs. Hale
sympathizes. She, too, was suddenly called away from her work. She wants to tidy up but worries
what Mrs. Peters, the timid, compliant sheriff ’s wife, might think. Mrs. Hale thinks about Minnie, her
girlhood friend, and wishes she had kept in better touch over the years. Mrs. Hale complains about
how the men talk about Minnie and her kitchen, but Mrs. Peters defends the men, who are doing
their jobs.

A quick inspection of the kitchen shows what a cheap man John Wright was. Minnie’s rocker and
stove are in bad shape, and the cabinets are make-do. When the women gather Minnie’s clothes, Mrs.
Hale sees that they are shabby and mended, unlike the bright, pretty clothes Minnie wore when she
sang in the choir. The women wonder whether Minnie is guilty. Mrs. Peters says that, during the trial,
Mr. Henderson plans to mock Minnie’s claim about sleeping through the murder. But the attorney
needs evidence that Minnie experienced some “sudden feeling” to explain why she killed her
husband.

The women see that Minnie had been sewing pieces for a quilt with even, competent stitches. As
they discuss whether Minnie planned to quilt the pieces or knot them, the men walk through the
kitchen on their way to the barn, and the sheriff mocks the women’s conversation. When the women
notice that one piece is badly sewn, as if Minnie had become upset, they exchange a silent glance.
Mrs. Hale begins to undo the stitches and replace them with neat ones. Mrs. Peters objects that they
shouldn’t touch anything, but she doesn’t stop Mrs. Hale.

Mrs. Peters sees a damaged birdcage, its twisted door hanging from a bent hinge. The women infer
that Minnie, who once loved to sing, had bought a songbird. They wonder where the bird is. Mrs.
Hale begins to imagine Minnie’s life, without children, out in the country, with an uncaring husband.
She thinks of the joy a songbird might bring the lonely woman. To avoid such thoughts, she suggests
that they take the quilt pieces to give Minnie something to do in jail. As the women gather supplies,
they find a pretty box in the sewing basket. Inside, wrapped in silk, is the bird, its neck twisted. They
lock eyes with “dawning comprehension” and hide the box as the attorney and sheriff return. Mrs.
Peters misleads the attorney, saying that a cat must have got the bird. Ignoring her, the two men go
back upstairs.

The women can hardly give voice to their thoughts, but Mrs. Peters recalls a boy killing her kitten
when she was young. She remembers wanting to hurt the boy. She insists, “We don’t know,” but the
women do know. Minnie strangled John because John strangled her bird. The bird is the clue the
attorney needs to suggest motive, and the women must decide whether to hand it over or conceal it.
Without speaking, they opt to hide it just as the men return. The attorney scoffs again at the
women’s discussion of whether Minnie planned to quilt the pieces or . . . he can’t recall the other
option. Mrs. Hale reminds him that the other option is to “knot it.”

3.3. The Judgement by Franz Kafka

The story begins with a young merchant, Georg Bendemann, sitting in his room writing a letter to
his dear friend in Russia, who had left their hometown some years previously to set up a business
that, though initially successful, is now failing. Georg is writing to tell his friend, amongst other
things, that he is engaged to marry Frieda Brandenfeld, a girl from a well-to-do family.
Georg breaks out of his reverie and decides to check on his father. Though quite ill, Georg's father
appears huge. Georg informs his father that he has just written a letter to his friend, updating him
on his upcoming marriage. His father questions the existence of the friend in Russia, at which point
Georg changes the subject. Georg's father accuses him of deceiving him about the happenings of
the business. He claims the death of his wife (Georg's mother) hit him harder than it did Georg.
Georg insists on having his father lie down in bed for a while. Because of this, Georg's father claims
his son wants him dead. Moreover, he admits to knowing his son's friend, and, in fact, to having
been carrying on a correspondence with him concurrently with Georg's. He claims to have swayed
the friend's loyalty from Georg to himself, and that the friend reads the father's letters, and disposes
of Georg's without reading them. He makes Georg feel terrible, suggesting that Georg has ignored
his friend ever since he moved away to Russia. The father does not appreciate Georg's love and care,
maintaining he can take care of himself. Georg shrinks back into a corner, scared of his father and
his harsh words.
Georg's father accuses him of being selfish and finally sentences him to "death by drowning". Georg
feels himself pushed from the room. He runs from his home to a bridge over a stretch of water. He
swings himself over the railing and plunges, apparently to his death.

3.4. A Benefit of Doubt by Jack London

Carter Watson, an eminent sociologist, has spent most of his life traveling around the world studying
the dynamics of society and human behavior. When, after twenty years, he returns to his native city,
he can hardly believe his eyes: the peaceful and decent neighborhood of his childhood has given way
to degradation, becoming infamous area. His curiosity as a scholar makes him venture among the
shabby streets, looking for new ideas for his studies

3.5. The Case for Defense by Grahamme Greene

"The Case for the Defence" tells the story of a case known as the "Peckham Murder", in which an
old woman named Mrs. Parker has been murdered in the middle of the night by a heavy stout man
named Mr. Adams. There are several witnesses, the main one being Mrs. Salmon, who glimpsed Mr.
Adams' face after seeing him on the steps of Mrs. Parker's house hiding a hammer. At the trial, Mrs.
Salmon presents her account firmly and honestly, and, it is confident that the heavy man in the dock
is Mr. Adams. She presented her testimony with honesty, care, and concern. This leads to a positive
appearance towards Mrs. Salmon. However, she becomes flustered when the man's counsel presents
to her an identical-looking man at the back of the courtroom, who is revealed to be his twin brother.
None of the other witnesses can swear that the Adams twin in the dock is the Adams they had seen
on the night of the murder, and both twins have alibis, that each was with his wife at the time. The
twin in the dock is thus acquitted for lack of evidence. Then, as the twins are leaving the courtroom,
a freak accident sees one of them pushed in front of a bus and killed. Divine vengeance?,thus
deepening the mystery of the "Peckham Murder".The author concludes the story with the question:
"If you were Mrs. Salmon, could you sleep at night?"
 MODULE 4
Language Enhancement

4.1 Writing Skills

4.1.1 Paragraph writing - https://www.uvu.edu/writingcenter/docs/basicessayformat.pdf
4.1.2 Summary Writing - https://languagetool.org/insights/post/how-to-write-a-summary/
Report Writing - https://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-write-a-report/