Ain't I a Woman?: What's Up With the Closing Lines?
Ain't I a Woman?: What's Up With the Closing Lines?
The legit final sentence of "Ain't I a Woman?" is a polite thank you from an unscheduled speaker confident in having made her points.
"Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say." (26)
Nice, but that doesn't really give us much to go on. The closing sentences just before, however, are a lot juicier.
"If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them." (24-25)
Her audience was the attendees of a conference on women's rights, which included abolitionists, white people, Black people, ministers, suffragists, and troublemakers. Let's keep that in mind while we examine Sojourner's final sentences.
First up is her reference to Eve as a force of change. Now, she doesn't actually say if being cast out of Eden was a good or bad thing, but she uses Eve as a standard for female strength and action. Quick recap: her audience was probably entirely Christian, in a time when women were considered as needing to be subjugated by men to make up for Eve leading Adam to temptation.
Okay, now consider Sojourner, a tall, female, former slave using Eve as a justification for women power. Dang.
Her point, however, was that people had held up this one woman (Eve) as the reason why everything bad had ever happened…so is it really out of the realm of possibility that a bunch of determined women could shake things up again? Short answer: no, no it's not.