Summary

After looking examples that demonstrate the suppression of female voices in the classical period, Beard turns to examples from early modern history, and identifies a tendency in speeches by women to be exclusively about the weaknesses of women. One example is Queen Elizabeth, who, during a 1588 address to the soldiers at Tilbury during the Spanish Armada, was recorded to have said that, despite her feminine “weakness,” she had the “heart and stomach of a king” (22). Another example is ex-slave and abolitionist Sojourner Truth’s 1851’s “Ain’t I a Woman” speech. Despite these examples, Beard asserts that their words have been mythologized to fit a certain conception of women speaking in history. Turning to contemporary US politics, she details how the recent silencing of Elizabeth Warren in the Senate – which occurred when she attempted to read a letter by Coretta Scott King – did...