Someone Must Wash the Dishes: An Anti-Suffrage Satire 

Performance & Discussion by Michèle LaRue
Sunday, March 3     3pm – 5pm
Performance with Lecture, followed by a reception.
Co-sponsored with the League of Women Voters of Fairfield, Greater Bridgeport, Norwalk and Westport.
Museum and LWV Members: $10; non-members: $15

Many women fought against getting the vote in the early 1900s, but none with more charm, prettier clothes--and less logic--than the fictional speaker in this satiric monologue written in 1912, by pro-suffragist Marie Jenney Howe. "Woman suffrage is the reform against nature," declares Howe's unlikely, but irresistibly likeable, heroine. "Ladies, get what you want. Pound pillows. Make a scene. Make home a hell on earth--but do it in a womanly way! That is so much more dignified and refined than walking up to a ballot box and dropping in a piece of paper!"

Contradicting as many points as she makes--yet never noticing--this well-intentioned speaker sincerely believes that her efforts as a "womanly woman" will keep the Home intact, and save the Nation from anarchy.