The audience in "Ain't I A Woman" by Sojourner Truth is a very important rhetorical device in supporting her passionate speech that calls for equal rights for all people but specifically for African American women. Although her immediate audience are the women at the women's convention she is delivering her speech to, Sojourner Truth is directing her speech towards men both white and black. She calls them out as "that man over there" with little to no respect. Truth states how nobody "helps [her] in carriages, or over mud-puddles." The juxtaposition of the idea that men are stating women need extra help reveal the hypocrisy of men. The audience of the men allow her to expose their injustices towards women. She is angry that they are forbidding her from her natural rights that should be equal to all people. It leads her to declare "ain't I a woman" several times with pride. It is almost a slogan that she is rallying women behind. She is using the logic that she is a woman and has been doing everything men have been doing without any praise. Truth is proving the men wrong. Her fervor is rooted in her audience, the men. Without the men, her speech would have a completely different tone and message.
I agree with her main audience being fellow women, who can understand the pain Truth expresses in her speech. But it also includes men, like you said, because their support is also required to make any changes in the lives of women.
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