Ain't I a Woman?: Juxtaposition
Ain't I a Woman?: Juxtaposition
In one hand, you've got men's frilly, pink ideal of women, and in the other, you've got cold hard reality. And they're about as different as, oh, a meticulously filtered Instagram and what's real.
This is, arguably, the strongest part of Truth's argument. She directly juxtaposes the image of women:
"That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere." (4)
…with the reality from her own experiences.
This is the section where she starts discussing her life, saying:
"I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me!" (9-13)
The phrase "mic drop" isn't nearly strong enough to express the Truth's truth.
Basically, this is Truth saying that if she can do everything a man can, why isn't she treated as a man? She's also pointing out the hypocrisy of treating white women differently from Black women, since the white woman is the one helped into carriages and the Black woman is the one out planting.
This is the equivalent of throwing a bucket of cold water in the audience's face for forgetting about the Black woman entirely in the quest for equal rights. Because this audience needed a rude awakening.