The Evolution of McCulloch's Rhetorical Style

Writing was a central way for Catharine Waugh McCulloch to convey her legal understanding and positions to the public. She believed that even though most people did not have law degrees, they could still be aware of how their lives were influenced by the law. She wrote about legal issues in an accessible and engaging way that helped lay readers understand their legal rights, often with the intention of galvanizing those readers to take action to reform discriminatory policies. In addition, her rhetorical style evolved over the course of her career to convey new legal understanding and meet the needs of the moment.

After moving back to Rockford to open her first law practice in 1886, McCulloch returned to Rockford Female Seminary to pursue a Master’s Degree. Completed in 1888, her Master's thesis, Woman’s Wages, spoke to multiple issues around women’s financial security. McCulloch argued for women maintaining a level of financial independence, even though, at the time, working women often had to give their wages directly to their husbands. Many women also worked only in the home, which McCulloch saw as labor that demanded quantification, especially in divorce cases so that women were not left without resources. McCulloch proposed “remedies” for how the law could be more equitable to women given the prominence of laws that reduced married women’s legal rights. Even in her twenties, McCulloch was steadfast in her values and that motivated her writing. The prelude of her thesis states: “my ideas bear marks of immaturity and lack of extended knowledge, but I believe they have common sense, truth and justice.” This work would prove to be the start of a long and prolific writing career for McCulloch. 

Her writings were not limited to legal analysis and opinions. She ventured into playwriting as a way to express her political perspectives in an approachable format. She wrote Mr. Lex: The Legal Status of Mother and Child in 1899 to demand equal guardianship laws where mother and father shared legal responsibility for the children. McCulloch crafted a gripping tale about the hubris of men who do not respect their wives. Mr. Lex did not listen to his wife’s plea to call a doctor for their youngest child’s illness which led to the child’s death. He further abandoned their daughter who had become pregnant after being sexually assaulted, and notably a single female relative took the young woman in. Throughout these vignettes, Mrs. Lex had to circumvent her husband’s careless wishes in order to protect her family. McCulloch used the play to demonstrate that the American legal system disenfranchised women in numerous ways, and that could have serious consequences if not addressed. These potent calls to action became a hallmark of McCulloch’s writing as she became focused on passing accompanying legislation. McCulloch’s work on guardianship reform would culminate in the 1901 passage of child guardianship reform that split responsibility of children between the husband and wife. 

By the early 1900s, McCulloch dedicated much of her work to the passage of Illinois and national women’s suffrage. Her writing in these years included a clear demand for women to get involved and for men to use their voting rights to pass suffrage when it was on the ballot. Her pamphlet Illinois Laws Concerning Women from 1909 covered the status of women’s rights in the state, especially the gains and setbacks McCulloch had experienced thus far in her career. Her language in this pamphlet is a combination of the formality of her thesis and the narrative driven Mr. Lex. She described in clear terms the legal wins women have made, but also the ways that lawmakers continued to suppress women’s rights, such as by adding extra amendments on McCulloch’s 1905 Age of Consent bill making it less effective in punishing perpetrators of sexual assault against young women.

She also includes some literary devices, using sarcasm and narrative tools to make it more readable. In her 1911 speech Shall Men Vote? she asked the primarily male audience at the Forty Club to imagine that only women had the vote and men had to ask women to enfranchise them. She described the many ways men were unfit for voting and poked fun at paternalistic reasoning: “Just trust us to legislate better than you could for yourselves.” All of these arguments were pulled from the arguments of women’s suffrage opponents, flipping the script to persuade the public by showing how ridiculous they were. Throughout 1911, McCulloch gave this speech multiple times and it was later distributed as a pamphlet. 

McCulloch produced speeches and pamphlets with similar messages around this period. Doors and Windows from 1911 describes the roundabout way women gained limited voting rights, while disenfranchised men (like Black and Indigenous men) had been let in through the “front door.” In her interpretation, women had to go through “windows,” such as finding legal loopholes like voting for school board positions, and slowly work their way to full suffrage. Doors and Windows offers another example of McCulloch conveying her argument through metaphors. In 1913, Illinois finally passed McCulloch’s 1893 suffrage legislation, perhaps in part because of her relentless rhetorical appeals over the final years leading up to the vote. 

McCulloch continued to write essays and speeches for women and children’s causes well into the twentieth century. After the passage of the 19th (Women’s Suffrage) Amendment, she transitioned into leadership in the League of Women Voters and the Illinois Democratic Party. In 1924 she updated Working Wages and Mr. Lex with the article “The Economic Status of a Wife Working at Home.” To honor her significant contributions to public service, Rockford College gave her an Honorary Doctorate in 1936 which highlighted how her scholarly and narrative writings were influential to the public.  

Sources 

Waugh McCulloch, Catharine. Doors and Windows, Published by the Political Equality League, Evanston IL, 1911, Evanston History Center Subject Files.

Waugh McCulloch, Catharine. “Illinois Laws Concerning Women” February 1909, Evanston History Center Subject Files. 

Waugh McCulloch, Catharine. “Illinois Laws Need Women’s Votes,” Illinois Equal Suffrage Association (date unknown), Evanston History Center Subject Files. 

Waugh McCulloch, Catharine. “Illinois Suffrage Struggle Succeeds After 58 Years: Fairness to Prevail: Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch Tells of Success After Years of Failure.”The Evanston Daily News, June 16, 1913,  Evanston History Center Subject Files.

Waugh McCulloch, Catharine, Mr. Lex or The Legal Status of Mother and Child, H. Revell Company 1899, Evanston History Center Subject Files. 

Waugh McCulloch, Catharine, “Shall Men Have the Ballot?”, Forty Club, Pamphlet, (Date Unknown), Evanston History Center Subject Files. 

Waugh McCulloch, Catharine, “The Economic Status of a Wife Working at Home,” 1924, Evanston History Center Subject Files. 

Waugh McCulloch, Catharine. “Woman’s Wages” Part III: Remedies, Master’s Thesis for Rockford College, 1888, Evanston History Center Subject Files.