The suffragist and the “average woman”

Abstract

This paper questions the marginality of womens suffrage to the new social history of women in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain. In so doing, it seeks to challenge any notion of the suffragist and the average woman as absolutely distinct categories. Its argument draws on two major revisions underway in the historiography of this field: firstly, the growing recognition that votes for women was not simply a single-issue, equal rights demand, reflecting only a restricted liberal perspective; secondly, the equally significant insistence on the need to apply more extended definitions of both the political and the public to womens history in this period. The autobiographical writings of Helena Swanwick, Hannah Mitchell and Mary Gawthorpe, it is argued, suggest that the meaning of the vote lies in the mesh experienced by such suffragists between the politics of ordinary, everyday life and their subsequent involvement in the formal politics of parliament and political parties.Around about 1900 Mary Gawthorpe, a pupil teacher from a working-class district in late nineteenth-century Leeds, was confirming an unspoken

Traditions and double moral standards: the Irish suffragists' critique of nationalism[1]

“…However, while it is clearly important to acknowledge the significance of the national question for feminism in Ireland, it would be wrong to discuss the suffragists only within that context. Drawing on the arguments already discussed at length by Sandra Stanley Holton [52], I wish to argue that the Irish suffragists had a much broader agenda than simply the enfranchisement of women. Their critique of the nationalists was just part of the feminist analysis of Irish society in the early decades of this century.…”

“…In recent years there has been a growing debate about whether the suffrage movement constituted a single issue 'votes for women' campaign or if its agenda was broader and more demanding. [2] This paper will discuss the Irish suffrage movement and examine the extent to which these women challenged conventions and double moral standards and represented a feminist analysis of Irish society in the early twentieth century. However, the suffragists' efforts to challenge and critique Irish society were complicated by the national question.…”

“only be ye strong and very courageous”: the militant suffragism of lady constance lytton

“…[10] Holton has challenged the idea of the suffragist and the 'average woman' as being distinct categories, arguing instead that the political activity of the former was not divorced from their everyday lives. She suggests many suffragists, even those with a strong commitment to the movement, had to fit political activity alongside the familiar facets of being women: work, family, love and friendship.…”

Feminist biography and feminist history

“…If one takes the case of Victorian and Edwardian England, for example, biography and autobiography make up one of the largest sources for the history of the Thus Millicent Fawcett wrote a biography of Josephine Butler and was in turn the subject of a biography by her friend and colleague, RayStrachey [5]. Even before the vote was fully won, Emily Davies had found a Victorian feminists start from the premise that their subject is of interest because her differences from other women made her exceptional amongst her sex [9]. Women like Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, Emily Davies or Millicent Garrett Fawcett continue to be presented by their recent biographers as women who were ahead of their time and who deserve recognition and gratitude from later generations because of what they did to…”