Rhetorical Analysis Of Florence Kelley

Words: 1238
Pages: 5

In the midst of the struggle for equality concerning working women and children, reformer Florence Kelley utilized speeches containing emotional appeals and rhetorical devices in attempt to have her audience submit to the idea of social reforms. In her speech at the National American Women's Suffrage Association, Kelley powerfully illustrates the terrible conditions for working women and children through invoking imagery and emphatic diction.
Florence Kelley convinced the people of the National Women's Suffrage Association that the need for the appeal for help in freeing the children and lessening the workload for women was completely dire through her utilization of effective imagery. Kelley reveals to her audience the true essence of a problem
…show more content…
This strongly appeals to pathos, most of the audience are women and mothers, and by painting this image of a small girl reaching for her duty at work, Kelley juxtaposes the idea that a child is usually supposed to be in school or in bed during these hours that these young girls are working, with no restrictions in place regarding the situation, drawing powerful emotion from the audience. Kelley also appeals to pathos by illustrating the auditory image of the unimaginably horrible working conditions for little girls "working in textile mills...in the deafening noise of the spindles and the looms spinning", which depicts a picture of thousands helpless little innocent girls hopelessly working through similar dreadful conditions on a mass scale because the audience-whom Kelley appealed to through the knowledge that her audience was majority of mothers whose …show more content…
Kelley's use of arguments appealing to pathos most likely encouraged the women to gain suffrage, which affects us today in the right that women can vote and have a greater voice and role in society today. By relating suffrage to child labor, Kelley managed to persuade her audience to act in favor for a change in working conditions throughout the large groups of exploited working women and children without a voice, causing a vital shift in the way the world functions economically and the regulations put on labor