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Suffrage Songs and Verses

Chapter 4: Locked Inside
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About This Book

A collection of poems and songs that urge women's political enfranchisement and social reform, blending moral argument, satire, and lyrical reflection. Several pieces reframe motherhood and domestic labor as public responsibilities, converting private care into a reason for civic participation; others mock anti-suffrage rationales and challenge female passivity. The verse alternates earnest exhortation, vivid domestic scenes, and rallying refrains to encourage collective action, education, and self-recognition. Overall it presents suffrage as necessary for family welfare and social progress, urging women to move from seclusion to engaged public life.

LOCKED INSIDE f

She beats upon her bolted door,
With faint weak hands;
Drearily walks the narrow floor;
Sullenly sits, blank walls before;
Despairing stands.
Life calls her, Duty, Pleasure, Gain—
Her dreams respond;
But the blank daylights wax and wane,
Dull peace, sharp agony, slow pain—
No hope beyond.
Till she comes a thought! She lifts her head,
The world grows wide!
A voice—as if clear words were said—
“Your door, O long imprisonéd,
Is locked inside!”