From the Hammer to the Fist: The Pleasures and Dangers of March, Progress and Protest in Creating Social Justice from the First Wave to the Present
2017; Bridgewater State University; Volume: 18; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1539-8706
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Gender and Feminism Studies
ResumoPostmodern feminist women all struggle for fair representation under law; whether it is a battle over control of their own bodies, access to public space without facing street harassment, or basic rights to equal pay, their bodies are center of debate. Edwardian suffrage women put their actual bodies on line: Marching in processions, advertising meetings with sandwich boards, chaining themselves to government fences, suffering forced-feedings, in all such cases theirs were bodily sacrifices that invited comment just by their very presence in public domain. Then, as now, women suffered a keen and constant surveillance, as Kitty Marion, a British suffragette member of Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), confessed: What a lesson in self-denial, self-abnegation, self-discipline. The first time I took my place on 'Island' in Piccadilly Circus, near flower sellers, I felt as if every eye that looked at me was a dagger piercing me through and I wished ground would open and swallow me. (3) Marion's experience was far from unique; rather, it was part of vast visual history of British suffrage campaign for social justice; most impacting way they demonstrated their collective desire for vote was through a series of marches and pilgrimages of pictorial unity (Fig. 1). Women marched in white dresses with elaborate hats, fully gloved, wearing sashes in colors of their respective suffrage organizations, making a performance of femininity on parade. As Barbara Green suggests, the suffragettes cultivated a delicate relationship between and fashionable femininity, developing ... an ornamental as civic body (3). But beautiful spectacles and suffragettes' efforts to present themselves as respectable women worthy of vote, were not enough to convince British government of women's desire for equality under law. They had to push against government physically. A move from spectacular activism to warfare for WSPU was necessary and was also a sign of processions' failure, according to WSPU members, Marion and Emmeline Pethick- Lawrence (Qtd. in Green 71). While Martha Vicinus astutely argues that, Such huge public events. asserted power of women to use public space for political purposes(266), WSPU eventually upped ante by employing aggressive tactics, letting go of such restrained politics of respectability. The WSPU were first suffrage group to take on more strident actions, modeling themselves on tactics of men in labor movement, particularly in Manchester where Christabel Pankhurst, along with her mother, Emmeline, founded group in 1903 (Harrison 3638). While traditionally suffrage historians have pitted WSPU against other suffrage groups, principally National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), which Millicent Garrett Fawcett led, many suffrage women belonged to both main groups. The NUWSS chose to fight for suffrage along constitutional lines but they did join forces with WSPU and other suffrage groups to create demonstrations and processions. Nonetheless, WSPU approach represented a new and modern form of politics since they were first suffrage group to foreground tactics of militancy and, more broadly, to align themselves with trade-union tactics and other kinds of direct action. However, term militant was not equated with WSPU violence until 1908 when certain members started to break windows of government buildings as a form of protest. The next shift came when 1910 Conciliation Bill failed to pass, a bill that would have enfranchised women. Understandably, some 300 women rushed House of Commons demanding to be heard; this day came to be called Black Friday because of unprecedented police brutality women suffered while trying to conduct a peaceful demonstration. The last straw for WSPU members was when Parliament proposed a Manhood Suffrage Bill in late 1911, excluding women; this final conflict launched their West End window-smashing campaign. …
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