The recurring motif of women physically taking a stage or demanding a seat represents the tangible fight for political and social inclusion in arenas designed to exclude them. These acts are about more than occupying space, instead becoming visual disruptions of the male-dominated order and directly challenging The Erasure of Women From Historical Memory. The book opens with Susan B. Anthony and her fellow suffragists storming the stage at the 1876 Centennial celebration, an act of defiance against being denied a voice in the nation’s commemoration. Throughout the first and second parts of the book, O’Donnell discusses figures such as Anna Dickinson who gave speeches when public speaking for women was strongly discouraged if not outlawed at times.

A century later, Representative Pat Schroeder confronted the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who insisted she share a single chair with the committee’s only Black member to try to humiliate her. Schroeder recalled the chairman’s declaration that “these two people [we]re only worth half of the rest of [his] Members, so they’re getting one chair” (287). Her eventual victory in securing her own seat symbolizes a hard-won claim to legitimacy and power within the institution. From Dickinson becoming the first woman to address Congress to Inez Milholland leading a massive suffrage parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, this motif illustrates how women have repeatedly used their physical presence to command attention, assert their right to participate, and force a reckoning with their exclusion from public life.

Throughout We the Women, the act of signing a name or claiming a new one emerges as a motif for asserting agency, identity, and a place in the historical record. In a society that often rendered women anonymous or subsumed their identities under those of men, a signature was a deliberate act of self-declaration and political courage. The most notable example is Mary Katherine Goddard, who, in printing the Declaration of Independence, placed her full name at the bottom of the document. The author notes the significance of this act, stating, “Including her full name opened her up to the risk of being imprisoned by the British” (14). Goddard’s signature was a personal endorsement of a revolution and an act of defiance that inscribed a woman’s name onto the nation’s founding document. 

This act was mirrored by the suffragists who signed the Declaration of Sentiments and, in a different context, by Elizabeth Freeman, who, upon winning her freedom, “made a powerful statement of self-determination by changing her name from Bett to Elizabeth Freeman, rejecting her enslaved name and claiming her identity as a free woman” (42-43). In each instance, the name or signature was a direct rebuttal to The Erasure of Women From Historical Memory, symbolizing a refusal to remain silent or anonymous.