Shew 1
Mr. Shew
12/4/12
Block 1
Persuasive Essay
A Partner or a Servant
The essay I Want a Wife, by early feminist and women’s right’s activist Judy Brady,
address the issues and degrading gender roles faced by many women during her time that is still
relevant forty years later. Brady posits that no matter what women accomplish in life, they are
still only seen as the woman behind the man. She argues that women who are wives and mothers
are treated as second class citizens whose only important job in life is rear children and take care
of all the husband’s needs. Brady uses ethos and logos in her essay to educate the reader about
how wives are really treated and she exposes the discrepancy between a husband’s role and a
wife’s role in an institutional partnership that in actuality more closely resembles a king and a
serf.
Ethos and logos were first defined by Aristotle around 322 B.C. Aristotle examined what
he called rhetoric, better known as the art of persuasion, and classified three different sub
categories that all persuasive arguments fall in. The three categories he created are ethos, logos,
and pathos. Ethos appeals to the ethics and good standing of the speaker or author and any
appeals made to readers that force them to question their ethics. Logos uses logic and either
inductive or deductive reasoning to persuade a reader through logical arguments that generally
resemble common sense. Pathos appeals to a reader’s sense of emotion. It is the most volatile
and often most effective of the three appeals. Brady does use pathos in her essay, but she most
commonly and effectively uses ethos and logos.
Shew 2
Brady intelligently weaves ethos into her essay to support her opinion that she wants a
wife because of all the things they do for their partner. In the essay, Brady says, “When I am
through with school and have a job, I want a wife to quit working and remain at home so that my
wife can more fully and completely take care of a wife’s duties” (225). This argument is
appealing to a reader’s sense of right and wrong. Brady is using an over exaggeration to point out
that many husbands want financial support from their wives until they have a good job. Then the
wife must put aside her dreams and career to wait hand and foot on the husband. This quote
helps to illustrate Brady’s argument about the disparity between the sexes and what society says
a woman’s role is. Another quote that supports Brady’s argument is, “If, by chance, I find
another person more suitable as a wife than the wife I already have, I want the liberty to replace
my present wife with another one” (224). This quote shows ethos because Brady is pointing out
that men were allowed to divorce their wives, but women didn’t have the same right. Women
weren’t allowed to divorce their husbands during Brady’s time unless their safety and health
were in serious danger. This clearly supports Brady’s argument that gender roles favor men and
how husbands are allowed to trade in their old wives for a new model, but women must remain
with their husbands until they die are divorced. Brady makes several other ethical appeals to the
reader about the discrepancies between men and women that are supposed to be in an equal
partnership.
Brady allows intricately laces logic through her essay to support her main argument and
convince the reader to agree with her.