SOURCE: Linkon, Sherry Lee. “Saints, Sufferers, and ‘Strong-Minded Sisters’: Anti-suffrage Rhetoric in Rose Terry Cooke's Fiction.” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 10, no. 1 (1993): 31-46.

In the following essay, Linkon explores the strong female characters in Cooke's fiction—characters that the author used to illustrate what she considered the proper means by which women should exercise power and influence over men.

In an 1857 story for Harper's, Rose Terry Cooke presented the first of her many arguments against women's rights, beginning a critique of her “strong-minded sisters” that would continue throughout her life. In a long digression from the plot of “Rachel's Refusal,” Cooke's heroine explains to her suitor the foolishness of the Woman's Rights movement:

“[Strong-minded women] attempt to be reasonable that they may insure a hearing from men, who always call loudly for reasons; and women, having no more rational answer to give than their own instinctive...