By the picture of “Society of Patriotic Women at Edenton,” you get an image that not only portrays a dysfunctional organization of the start to our revolution, but a grotesque scene of carousing drunk American women involved in politics. The British want to make their fellow countrymen understand that at the time we aren’t even close to starting our own country. By closely trying to interpret this piece, you can find that the British are trying to weigh down the attitudes of our patriot activism by showing that we are not only disorganized, but also irresponsible.
When breaking down this portrait into sections, there are many significant details presented. Looking at the top left corner, there is an illustration of three women making an attempt to refill their flasks of gin, which at the time was a very potent, but inexpensive alcoholic beverage. This enables the viewer to focus on the fact that the people have engaged in a festive drunken party. By progressing to the right, an image shows that the theme has not stopped. A lady is plunging her mouth into a grog bowl of alcohol, as her friend encourages, and assists her. Continue to follow to the right and notice an African American servant enjoying her time at the soiree. This poses to be interesting, because at the time African Americans were considered slaves. However, the people in this image are of lower class, and therefore accept the African American woman as a companion rather then a servant. Move down towards the middle left portion and see a woman bending over exposing her butt. Thus displaying that the patriot women carried little care as to how conservative they looked. Leading to this promiscuity, in the main focus of the figure, there is a flirtatious man who is willingly trying to seduce a lady who freely exposes her cleavage. Down center of the depiction, you find a child who is struggling with a plate of food under a table without any parental supervision or care. The baby not only has trouble with trying to eat the food on the plate, but is continuously dealing with a harassing dog that seems to be licking the baby's face. As if this dog is not doing enough annoying damage, you focus on the fact that he is carelessly peeing on an empty container of gin lying on the floor. Through the mixture of all this commotion, a lady holding a gavel seems to be trying to get the attention of the partying patriots to partake in the meeting that is supposed to be taking place. Meanwhile nothing seems to be getting through.
By analyzing the picture through the explanation above, the British are trying to expose the American behavior towards patriotism in a foul and unjust manner. They have done this is numerous ways. Number one, by trying to portray the patriots as manly looking women, and then they take the images of these women and put them in a partying environment, where the men are guiltlessly trying to hit on the women present and the women continue to either pound down grog bowls or heavy flasks of lethal gin. This certainly depicts which is not suitable for trying to form an independent nation. Thus the propaganda in which the British have performed is demoralizing to our up starting government, and therefore would contribute to the anger in which we will fight for our independence.
Group Commentary
For this post we met on Thursday, September 16th on the 3rd floor of the Johnson Center at 12 noon until one o’clock. There we divided up the tasks and decided that Justin and Anh would write the first draft, Laura would edit and research images, Nhat would research links, and Shannon would do the group commentary. Justin and Anh came up with the first draft, and brought it back to the group when we met again on Friday at 12:30 at the Johnson Center, again for an hour. While there, everyone read the draft, and Laura began to edit. Then Nhat and Laura went online to find images and links to complement the post, and Shannon wrote the group commentary
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