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Gendering the Historiography of the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian Britain: some reflections

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09612025.2012.751768

1747-583X

June Purvis,

French Historical and Cultural Studies

Abstract The historiography of the British women's suffrage campaign is contested ground. This article, written by a feminist historian, contributes to the debate by offering some reflections on the writing of the history of the suffragette movement in Edwardian Britain during the twenty years or so that it has been the focus of her research. In particular, it critiques the gendered 'masculinist' approaches to the writing of the suffragette pasts and discusses some of the public and private debates that the author has been engaged in, when challenging such perspectives. Notes June Purvis (2002) Emmeline Pankhurst: a biography (London and New York: Routledge), p. 67. The term 'suffragette' is also applied to the women who joined the Women's Freedom League, formed in 1907 as a breakaway group from the WSPU—see Laura E. Nym Mayhall (2003) The Militant Suffrage Movement: citizenship and resistance in Britain, 1860–1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). For other accounts that discuss the historiography of the women's suffrage movement in Edwardian Britain see especially Sandra Stanley Holton (2000) The Making of Suffrage History, in June Purvis & Sandra Stanley Holton (Eds) Votes for Women (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 13–33; Sandra Stanley Holton (2000) Reflecting on Suffrage History, in Claire Eustance, Joan Ryan & Laura Ugolini (Eds) A Suffrage Reader: charting directions in British suffrage history (London and New York: Leicester University Press), pp. 20–26; Krista Cowman (2009) 'There is so much, and it will all be history': feminist activists as historians, the case of British suffrage historiography, 1908–2007, in Angelika Epple & Angelika Schases (Eds) Gendering Historiography: beyond national canons (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag), pp. 141–159, and Sandra Stanley Holton (2011) Challenging Masculinism: personal history and microhistory in feminist studies of the women's suffrage movement, Women's History Review, 20(5), pp. 829–841. I am grateful to the anonymous referees and to the editors of this Special Issue for constructive comments. However, any errors here are, of course, my own. Some historians contend that the dividing line between the 'militants' and the 'constitutionalists' was less clear cut than generally supposed—see Sandra Stanley Holton (1986) Feminism and Democracy: women's suffrage and reform politics in Britain 1900–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Ann Morley with Liz Stanley (1988) The Life and Death of Emily Wilding Davison (London: The Women's Press); and Mayhall, The Militant Suffrage Movement—but this is not particularly evident in many of the WSPU speeches and pamphlets of the time, reprinted in Jane Marcus (Ed.) (1987) Suffrage and the Pankhursts (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul) and in Cheryl R. Jorgensen-Earp (Ed.) (1999) Speeches and Trials of the Militant Suffragettes: the Women's Social and Political Union, 1903–1918 (New Jersey and London: Associated Presses). Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, chapters 18 and 20; Angela K. Smith (2005) Suffrage Discourse in Britain during the First World War (Aldershot: Ashgate); June Purvis (2007) The Pankhursts and the Great War, in Alison Fell & Ingrid Sharp (Eds) The Women's Movement in Wartime: international perspectives, 1914–19 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 141–157. Elizabeth Crawford (1999) The Women's Suffrage Movement: a reference guide 1866–1928 (London: UCL Press), pp. 663–664. The archive also included memoirs and memorabilia from the Women's Freedom League. For discussion of the ways in which the archive was shaped around imprisonment as the defining act of militancy see Laura E. Nym Mayhall (1995) Creating the 'Suffragette Spirit': British feminism and the historical imagination, Women's History Review, 4, pp. 319–344. The Suffragette Fellowship Collection is now housed in the Museum of London. See, for example, Annie Kenney (1924) Memories of a Militant (London: Edward Arnold); E. Sylvia Pankhurst (1931) The Suffragette Movement (London: Longman); Ethel Smyth (1933) Female Pipings in Eden (London: Peter Davies); Evelyn Sharp (1933) Unfinished Adventure: selected reminiscences from an Englishwoman's life (London: John Lane); Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence (1938) My Part in a Changing World (London: Victor Gollancz); Mary R. Richardson (1957) Laugh a Defiance (London: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson); Christabel Pankhurst (1959) Unshackled: the story of how we won the vote (London: Hutchinson), and Hannah Mitchell (1968) The Hard Way Up: the autobiography of Hannah Mitchell suffragette and rebel, ed. Geoffrey Mitchell (London: Faber & Faber). For discussion of these autobiographies see Hilda Kean (1994) Searching for the Past in Present Defeat: the construction of historical and political identity in British feminism in the 1920s and 1930s, Women's History Review, 3, pp. 57–80; Maroula Joannou (1995) 'She who would be politically free herself must strike the blow': suffragettes autobiography and suffragette militancy, in Julia Swindells (Ed.) The Uses of Autobiography (London: Taylor & Francis). The interviews are housed in The Women's Library, London School of Economics and Political Science. See Brian Harrison (1982) The Act of Militancy: violence and the suffragettes, 1904–1914, in his Peaceable Kingdom: stability and change in modern Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 26–81. See, for example, June Purvis (1989) Hard Lessons: the lives and education of working-class women in nineteenth-century England (Cambridge: Polity Press). Dale Spender (Ed.) (1981) Men's Studies Modified: the impact of feminism on the academic disciplines (Oxford: Pergamon Press). Sheila Rowbotham's Hidden from History: 300 years of women's oppression and the fight against it (London: Pluto Press), 1973, is regarded as the catalyst for the development of women's history in Britain at this time. Emmeline Pankhurst (1914) My Own Story (London: Eveleigh Nash). Pankhurst, My Own Story, p. 119. Pankhurst, My Own Story, p. 247. Pankhurst, My Own Story, p. 129. Pankhurst, My Own Story, p. 246. See Constance Rover (1967) Women's Suffrage and Party Politics in Britain 1866–1914 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul) and Marian Ramelson (1967) The Petticoat Rebellion: a century of struggle for women's rights (London: Lawrence & Wishart). Antonia Raeburn (1973) The Militant Suffragettes (London: Michael Joseph). See, for example, Roger Fulford (1957) Votes for Women (London: Faber & Faber); David Morgan (1975) Suffragists and Liberals: the politics of woman suffrage in Britain (Oxford: Blackwell); Andrew Rosen (1974) Rise Up Women!: the militant campaigns of the Women's Social and Political Union 1903–1914 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul); and Martin Pugh (1980) Women's Suffrage in Britain 1867–1928 (London: The Historical Association). Rowbotham, Hidden from History, p. 88. Jill Craigie (1978) The suffragettes who marched in clogs, review of Jill Liddington and Jill Norris (1978) One Hand Tied Behind Us: the rise of the women's suffrage movement (London: Virago), The Guardian, 29 June; Liddington and Norris, One Hand, pp. 179–192. David Mitchell (1977) Queen Christabel: a biography of Christabel Pankhurst (London: MacDonald and Jane's), p. 207 for incestuous quote. See Carl Rollyson (2005) To Be A Woman: the life of Jill Craigie (London: Aurum), p. 319. Jill Craigie, The Suffragettes, unpublished paper dated 24 May 1967, Jill Craigie Collection, The Women's Library. See Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, pp. 2–4; E. Sylvia Pankhurst (1931) The Suffragette Movement: an intimate account of persons and ideals (London: Longman). Jane Marcus (1987) Introduction to her edited book, Suffrage and the Pankhursts, pp. 5–6. Holton, 'The Making', pp. 13–33; Holton, 'Challenging Masculinism', pp. 832–834. For further discussion on masculinist history see Mary Spongberg (2002) Writing Women's History since the Renaissance (Basingstoke: Macmillan). Holton, 'The Making', p. 22. Holton, 'Challenging Masculinism', p. 829. Holton, 'Challenging Masculinism', p. 834. George Dangerfield (1966) The Strange Death of Liberal England (London: MacGibbon & Kee, first published 1935). Dangerfield, Strange Death, p. 133. Dangerfield, Strange Death, pp. 167, 155–156 Dangerfield, Strange Death, pp. 128, 132–133. Dangerfield, Strange Death, pp. 173, 177. Marcus, 'Introduction', pp. 2–3. Roger Fulford (1957) Votes for Women (London: Faber & Faber); Rosen, Rise Up Women!; Pugh, Women's Suffrage in Britain; Martin Pugh (2000) The March of the Women: a revisionist analysis of the campaign for women's suffrage, 1866–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Fulford, Votes for Women, pp. 18 and 293. Fulford, Votes for Women, pp. 176 and 206. Rosen, Rise Up Women!, pp. xvi and 245. Harrison, 'The Act of Militancy', p. 46. Harrison, 'The Act of Militancy', p. 48. Mitchell, Queen Christabel, p. 160. Holton, 'The Making', p. 24. Cowman, 'Feminist Activists as Historians', p. 154. It is interesting to note that the historian Geoff Eley (2002) in Forging Democracy: the history of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000 (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 104–105 does not write about the suffragettes in this masculinist tone even though he attributes the NUWSS–Labour alliance as the key to winning the parliamentary vote for women. Kenney, Memories, pp. 294–295. Pugh, Women's Suffrage in Britain, p. 40. Rosen, Rise Up Women!, p. xv. June Purvis (1995) The Prison Experiences of the Suffragettes in Edwardian Britain, Women's History Review, 4(1), pp. 103–133; June Purvis (2009) The Power of the Hunger Strike, BBC History Magazine, June, pp. 36–40; Anne Schwan (2013) 'Bless the Gods for my Pencils and Paper': Katie Gliddon's prison diary, Percy Bysshe Shelley and the suffragettes at Holloway, Women's History Review, 22 (1), pp. 148–167. Pugh, The March, p. 268. Pugh, The March, pp. 29–30; Susan Kingsley Kent (1987) Sex and Suffrage in Britain 1860–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press). The list is extensive but see especially Martha Vicinus (1985) Male Space and Women's Bodies: the suffragette movement, in her Independent Women: work and community for single women 1850–1920 (London: Virago); Joannou, 'She who would be politically free …'; Morley with Stanley, Emily Wilding Davison; Sandra Stanley Holton (1996) Suffrage Days: stories from the women's suffrage movement (London and New York: Routledge); June Purvis (1996) A 'Pair of … Infernal Queens'? A Reassessment of the Dominant Representations of Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, First Wave Feminists in Edwardian Britain, Women's History Review, 5(2), pp. 259–280; Maroula Joannou & June Purvis (Eds) (1998) The Women's Suffrage Movement: new feminist perspectives (Manchester: Manchester University Press); Elizabeth Crawford (1999) The Women's Suffrage Movement: a reference guide 1866–1928 (London: UCL Press); June Purvis & Sandra Stanley Holton (Eds) (2000) Votes for Women (London and New York: Routledge); Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst; Krista Cowman (2002) 'Incipient Toryism'? The Women's Social and Political Union and the Independent Labour Party, 1903–14, History Workshop Journal, 53(1), pp. 129–148; Eustance et al. (Eds), A Suffrage Reader; Fran Abrams (2003) Freedom's Cause: lives of the suffragettes (London: Profile Books); Paula Bartley (2002) Emmeline Pankhurst (London and New York: Routledge); Krista Cowman (2007) Women of the Right Spirit: paid organisers of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) (Manchester: Manchester University Press); Krista Cowman (2009) What was Suffragette Militancy? An Exploration of the British Example, in Irma Sulkunen, Seij-Leenda Nevala-Nurmi & Pirjo Markkola (Eds) Suffrage, Gender and Citizenship: international perspectives on parliamentary reforms (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press), pp. 299–322; June Purvis (2009) Christabel Pankhurst and the Struggle for Suffrage Reform, in Sulkunen et al., (Eds), Suffrage, Gender and Citizenship, pp. 278–298. Jill Liddington (2006) Rebel Girls: their fight for the vote (London: Virago), a study of community suffragettes in Yorkshire notes, p. 314, that militancy permitted the Liberal Government to treat the suffrage campaign as a law-and-order issue rather than a struggle for women's citizenship. Sheila Rowbotham (2010) Dreamers of a New Day: women who invented the twentieth century (London: Verso), p. 43 and June Purvis 'New Women', a review of this book, Women's Review of Books, 28(2). Vanessa Thorpe & Alec Marsh (2000) Diary Reveals Lesbian Love Trysts of Suffragette Leaders, The Observer, 11 June. Martin Pugh (2001) The Pankhursts (London: Allen Lane), p. 212. Pugh, The Pankhursts, pp. xvi–xviii, 95 and 15. June Purvis, 'Pugh's book is full of errors'; Martin Pugh, 'Purvis's claims damage herself', and Harriet Swain, 'The Pankhursts—politics and passion', The Times Higher, 25 January 2002, pp. 18–19. See the letters page, The Times Higher, 1, 8, 15 and 22 February 2002. This issue was aired later in the Sunday Telegraph, see my letter to the Editor, 'Unwelcome among my fellow authors', 7 July 2002, and Lownie's reply, 'A writer of too great repute for our club', 14 July 2002. C. J. Bearman (2005) An Examination of Suffragette Violence, English Historical Review, CXX(486), pp. 365–397, quote p. 366. Bearman, 'Suffragette Violence', p. 380; Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, p. 190. Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, p. 190. Bearman, 'Suffragette Violence', p. 380. Bearman, 'Suffragette Violence', p. 380. On suffragettes acting independently of the leadership see, for example, Vicinus, Independent Women, p. 262; Purvis, '"Infernal Queens"', p. 270; Michelle Myall (1998) 'No Surrender!': the militancy of Mary Leigh, a working-class suffragette, in Joannou & Purvis (Eds), The Women's Suffrage Movement, pp.173–187. Bearman, 'Suffragette Violence', p. 366. C. J. Bearman (2007) Confronting the Suffragette Mythology, BBC History Magazine, 8(2), February, pp. 14–18. J. Gale (1965) 50 Years Later the Suffragettes Remember, The Observer Magazine, 7 February, p. 9. June Purvis (2007) Radical Fighters in a Just Cause, BBC History Magazine, 8(2), February, p. 20. Purvis, 'Radical Fighters', p, 21. Phil Baty (2007) Row Erupts over Suffragette Tale, The Times Higher, 26 January; Liz Lightfoot (2007) Suffragettes 'were like al-Qa'eda', Daily Telegraph, 10 February. C. J. Bearman (2007) Letter to the editor, The Times Higher, 16 February. See also the letters of the 2 and 9 February 2007. It is interesting to note that Edward Vallance (2009) A Radical History of Britain: visionaries, rebels and revolutionaries, the men and women who fought for our freedoms (London: Little, Brown) devotes four chapters to the suffrage movement, especially the WSPU, and is much more sympathetic to the suffragettes, arguing that they were not terrorists. He concludes, nonetheless, p. 524, that militancy 'played little part in securing women the vote'. See Caroline Daley & Melanie Nolan (Eds) (1994) Suffrage and Beyond: international feminist perspectives (Auckland: Auckland University Press); June Hannam, Mitzi Auchterlonie & Katherine Holden (Eds) (2000) International Encyclopedia of Women's Suffrage (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO) and Patricia Greenwood Harrison (2000) Connecting Links: the British and American woman suffrage movements, 1900–1914 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press); Louise Edwards & Mina Roces (Eds) (2004) Women's Suffrage in Asia: gender, nationalism and democracy (London and New York: Routledge): Gregory Hammond (2011) The Women's Suffrage Movement and Feminism in Argentina from Roca to Peron (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press), and Blanca Rodriguez-Ruiz & Ruth Rubio-Marin (Eds) (2012) The Struggle for Female Suffrage in Europe: voting to become citizens (Leiden and Boston: Brill). See Antoinette Burton (1994) Burdens of History: British feminists, Indian women, and imperial culture, 1865–1915 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press); Ian Christopher Fletcher, Laura E. Nym Mayhall & Philippa Levine (Eds) (2000) Women's Suffrage in the British Empire: citizenship, nation, and race (London and New York: Routledge); Lucy Delap (2007) The Feminist Avant-Garde: transatlantic encounters of the early twentieth century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Lisa Tickner (1988) The Spectacle of Women: imagery of the suffrage campaign 1907–14 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press); Maria Dicenzo with Lucy Delap & Leila Ryan (2011) Feminist Media History: suffrage, periodicals and the public sphere (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan); Katherine E. Kelly (2004) Seeing through Spectacles: the woman suffrage movement and the London newspapers, 1906–13, European Journal of Women's Studies, 11(3), pp. 327–353; Sheila Stowell (1992) A Stage of Their Own: feminist playwrights of the suffrage era (Manchester: Manchester University Press); Barbara Green (1997) Spectacular Confessions: autobiography, performative activism, and the sites of suffrage 1905–1938 (Basingstoke: Macmillan). Holton, Suffrage Days, p. 249, 'There are ample seams of evidence yet to be mined, many questions yet to be answered, and any number of new stories to be told—the kaleidoscope keeps on turning'. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJune PurvisJune Purvis is Professor of Women's and Gender History at the University of Portsmouth, UK. She is the Founding and Managing Editor of Women's History Review and also the Editor for a Women's and Gender book series with Routledge. She has published extensively on the British women's suffrage campaign, including Emmeline Pankhurst: a biography (Routledge, 2002). Her most recent book is Women's Activism: global perspectives from the 1890s to the present (co-edited with Francisca de Haan, Margaret Allen and Krassimira Daskalova (Routledge, 2013).