A Letter in Reply to Whom?

In phase three I looked more closely at Item #15, "Justina's Letters in Reply to Miss Garrett's Defense of the Contagious Diseases Acts," published in 1870. When analyzing the letter in order to look for examples of topoi and strategies used by women writers in public discourse I found that Christian morality and the fear of epidemic were seen as possible bases for the implementation of the Contagious Diseases Acts.

In terms of how she argues, I found it interesting that Justina focuses her letter almost entirely on addressing an essay written by a Miss Garrett in support of the acts as opposed to focusing on the injustices in the acts themselves. It may have been that in order to legitimize her claims Justina writes to critique the acts indirectly, through another woman's commentary. I would be interested in comparing how male writers approached the critique of or support of the Contagious Diseases Acts in order to compare writing styles. Are men more direct in their criticisms? If they are, that would be consistent with aspects of Campbell's "feminine style."

In looking at the three letters/responses to the Contagious Diseases Acts that were pulled for this topic I saw that for many, if not all, in favor of the acts they cited morality---Christian morality in particular--- as justification. I wonder if analyzing how women managed to critique the Christian basis for the Contagious Diseases Acts while conforming to the Christian values and norms of the time will give insight into the feminine style? I think this will be my jumping off point for my archival paper, and I will try to compare the use of religious rhetoric and/or Christian morality in the argumentation for and against the Contagious Diseases Acts. I think my first challenge will be determining what the Christian topoi of the time was. After that I want to look at the actual Acts themselves to see whether the focus of the language was on alleviating the venereal disease epidemic or was more about the morality of women.