Tearing off the Bonds

This illustration was created during the 1900’s women's suffrage movement. It was produced for Judge Magazine in the pro-suffrage column called The Modern Woman. The illustration shows a white woman tied up with ropes. Along the ropes it says “Politics is no place for women”. The ropes restricting the woman symbolize the physical restriction of women from voting. She is trying to rip them off of her, symbolizing how women want to break free from the restraints put on them by society. 

The artist, Annie Lucasta Rogers, was a member of a radical feminist club, Heterodoxy. In an interview in 1913 she said her cartoons were “a chance to help women see their own problems, help bring out the things that are true in the traditions that have bound them; help show up the things that are false.” At this time, creating cartoons that appealed to society was very important to help eliminate negative portrayals of women. In America, suffragists were commonly portrayed as old, mannish and unattractive. This made society think that women threatened the values of the nation, that it would affect the nature of their role in the home and their husbands’ masculinity. Artists wanted to highlight the power, influence and importance of women in society by painting them in a different light. Although society had prejudice against them, women activists fought really hard to prove their value and worth in society.