829 results for suffrage

Mary Catherine Hume

These letters address similar issues and demand several reforms including female suffrage, equitable divorce laws in cases of adultery, and female jurors. In her letter to Gladstone MCH employs the rhetoric of anti-slavery abolitionist campaigns by equating middle-class marital practices with prostitution, pleading for the day when women shall dare poverty, loneliness, contempt, starvation itself rather than sell themselves, whether to wealthy husbands, or less eligible purchasers.
qtd. in
Walkowitz, Judith R. Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State. Cambridge University Press, 1980.
128
She also calls for severe punishments for loose women and proposes that a woman impregnated by an unmarried man should be deemed legally married to her seducer. Scholar Kathleen McCormack finds that [t]hese practical attitudes contrast strongly with the pious stoicism of the characters and voices in her earlier poetic and prose narratives.
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 240. Gale Research, 2001.
240: 104
Irwin, Mary Ann. “’White Slavery’ as Metaphor: Anatomy of a Moral Panic”. Ex Post Facto: Journal of the History Students at San Francisco State University, Vol.
5
.
3
Scott, Anne L. “Physical Purity Feminism and State Medicine in Late Nineteenth-Century England”. Women’s History Review, Vol.
8
, No. 4, 1999, pp. 625-53.
643

Henrik Ibsen

Like Nora, Hedda Gabler became a feminist icon. At the Coronation Suffrage Pageant, the spectacular suffrage event of 17 June 1911, the contingent from the Actresses' Franchise League was led by an actress on horseback dressed as Hedda Gabler. The actress in question was Princess Bariatinsky , also known as Madame Lydia Yavorska, who performed Hedda Gabler and A Doll's House on the London stage between 1909 and 1911.
Farfan, Penny. “From Hedda Gabler to Votes for Women: Elizabeth Robins’s Early Feminist Critique of Ibsen”. Theatre Journal, Vol.
48
, No. 1, 1996, pp. 59-78.
59-60, 78n1

Geraldine Jewsbury

GJ 's political thought was full of contradictions, at times celebrating emancipated women and at others criticizing them.
Fryckstedt, Monica Correa. “New Sources on Geraldine Jewsbury and the Woman Question”. Research Studies, Vol.
51
, No. 2, June 1983, pp. 51-63.
59
In 1855, along with 26,000 others, she signed the petition (presented to Parliament on 14 March 1856) demanding reform of the law governing married women's property.
Fryckstedt, Monica Correa. “New Sources on Geraldine Jewsbury and the Woman Question”. Research Studies, Vol.
51
, No. 2, June 1983, pp. 51-63.
52, 55-6
While supporting the movement leading to the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882, GJ thought that the suffrage movement would not succeed by pushing Parliament for legislation. Instead, she argued that success could only be had if women united and showed themselves capable of obtaining and holding freedom.
qtd. in
Fryckstedt, Monica Correa. “New Sources on Geraldine Jewsbury and the Woman Question”. Research Studies, Vol.
51
, No. 2, June 1983, pp. 51-63.
56
While she agreed with the suffragists that sexual equality was needed, she argued that it would only result from solidarity among women and their increased presence in the workforce.
Fryckstedt, Monica Correa. “New Sources on Geraldine Jewsbury and the Woman Question”. Research Studies, Vol.
51
, No. 2, June 1983, pp. 51-63.
54, 56
Howe, Susanne. Geraldine Jewsbury: Her Life and Errors. George Allen and Unwin, 1935.
105
Her view was that women and men must be judged on equal terms: women should test what they can do by the same standard and the same tests that are applied to men. . . . Protection is as fatal to moral and intellectual prosperity as it is to commercial development.
qtd. in
Fryckstedt, Monica Correa. “New Sources on Geraldine Jewsbury and the Woman Question”. Research Studies, Vol.
51
, No. 2, June 1983, pp. 51-63.
54
She was an advocate for the education of women and of the working classes,
Schlueter, Paul, and June Schlueter, editors. An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. Garland, 1988.
255
Bodenheimer, Rosemarie. The Politics of Story in Victorian Social Fiction. Cornell University Press, 1988.
85
and in her own behaviour she challenged convention on several fronts, for instance by smoking cigars and swearing.
Rosen, Judith. “At Home Upon a Stage: Domesticity and Genius in Geraldine Jewsburys The Half SistersThe New Nineteenth Century Feminist Readings of Underread Victorian Fiction, edited by Barbara Leah Harman and Susan Meyer, Garland, 1996, pp. 17-32.
19

Sophia Jex-Blake

SJB felt her health failing her as she approached her late 60s and retired in 1899 to a house she named Windydene, in a village called Rotherfield in East Sussex. Here she welcomed friends from every part of her life, creating a space for conversation about women in medicine, women in the workplace, and eventually suffrage. As time went on, her guests at Windydene were more frequently women than men.
Roberts, Shirley. Sophia Jex-Blake. Routledge, 1993.
184, 188

Sheila Kaye-Smith

When SKS published a book her country neighbours took it for granted that she must be a suffragette. At that date, however, she was not opposed to Women's Suffrage—just not interested (I should think better of myself now if then I had at least done a little to help).
qtd. in
Walker, Dorothea. Sheila Kaye-Smith. Twayne, 1980.
24

Judith Kazantzis

Again contemporary documents in facsimile accompany explanatory broadsheets (on the suffrage campaign itself and contextual subjects beginning with The Prison House of Home) and an illustrated timeline, Women in Revolt, running from 1743 to the 1960s. Historical documents in facsimile are the minutes of a committee meeting at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School on 13 June 1861, which made concessions to complaints from male students about the presence of Elizabeth Garrett at lectures; anti-feminist cartoons; a Scotland Yard memorandum (with full-length mug shots) about women damaging property; pictures from the Sweated Industries Exhibition held in London in May 1906, showing women toiling at menial tasks (involving filthy used sacks, but also confirmation wreaths of white flowers, and beaded evening shoes); a flyer of the NUWSS ; a letter, 15 June 1890, about Philippa Fawcett 's triumph in coming top of the Cambridge mathematical lists; a much shorter letter about going on hunger strike in Holloway Prison ; the Daily Sketch issue for 19 November 1910 with a report and pictures of the previous day's Women's Social and Political Union protest at the House of Commons ; and, finally, the cards and instructions for a game called Panko , or Votes for Women, in which two sides (Suffragists and Anti-Suffragists) attempt to collect complete suits of cards representing moves and counter-moves in the struggle.
Kazantzis, Judith, editor. Women in Revolt: the fight for emancipation: a collection of contemporary documents. Cape, 1968.

May Kendall

Birch notes that Kendall's participation in the 1911 census suggests that she did not take part in the campaigns run by Votes for Women Fellowship for female heads of households to ruin their census returns as a protest against the refusal of full citizenship to women. This implies that she probably did not participate in the militant women's suffrage campaigns, which would be consistent with the tentative or veiled feminist statements in her writing.
Birch, Catherine Elizabeth. Evolutionary Feminism in Late-Victorian Women’s Poetry: Mathilde Blind, Constance Naden and May Kendall. University of Birmingham, Apr. 2011.
64

Emily Lawless

She was unsympathetic to the women's suffrage movement but concerned about the suffering of women factory workers.
Sichel, Edith. “Emily Lawless”. Nineteenth Century, Vol.
76
, July 1914, pp. 80-100.
98

Alice Dixon Le Plongeon

In the course of her fund-raising campaign ADLP made contact with many potential patrons. Mary Newbury Adams , a member of the National Woman Suffrage Association , invited her in early 1893 to speak at the Congress of Women during the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Le Plongeon did not take up this offer (she was probably too poor), but she continued to correspond with Adams, who suggested (ultimately without success) possible buyers for paintings.
Desmond, Lawrence Gustave. Yucatan Through Her Eyes: Alice Dixon Le Plongeon, Writer and Expeditionary Photographer. University of New Mexico, 2009.
279-80

Ethel Mannin

The novel's other main characters, Mary Thane and Stephen Lattimer, are, like Starridge, writers. One of the novel's focal points is the woman writer's changing role. Mary Thane, a prominent novelist, wants to stop writing so much journalism because she is sick . . . of Do Women, Should Women, Home Versus Careers, Should Married Women Work, Do Women Make the Best Wives,
Mannin, Ethel. Ragged Banners. Jarrolds, 1930.
108
but her financial dependence on articles on these topics keeps her churning them out. And while the market demands her opinions, she also finds it difficult to refuse the freer lifestyle that this type of writing and its profit allow: once one's contracted the taxi habit one never goes back to the 'bus.
Mannin, Ethel. Ragged Banners. Jarrolds, 1930.
108
After Starridge's death, Thane begins work on an article about the uselessness of female suffrage (The Vote Means Nothing to Me).
Mannin, Ethel. Ragged Banners. Jarrolds, 1930.
311
This kind of work remains her bread and butter,
Mannin, Ethel. Ragged Banners. Jarrolds, 1930.
310
and although her position reads as antifeminist (she says I don't feel that Mrs. Pankhurst has done anything for me. I never use my vote)
Mannin, Ethel. Ragged Banners. Jarrolds, 1930.
310
the novel's satirical tone suggests that she is able to write about not using her vote only because she has one to begin with. This fraught question of gender and politics gestures toward EM 's own idea that democratic government is an untenable route to social justice. Thane's comments point to a bleak conclusion regarding the personally and politically futile repetitions in the rhythm of a market-driven democracy: nothing remained but the dogged marching on, with the ragged banners rising and falling and rising again, against the slow relentlessness of the dawn of yet another day.
Mannin, Ethel. Ragged Banners. Jarrolds, 1930.
316

Emma Marshall

In her pamphlet Thoughts on Womens Suffrage, published at Bristol, EM argued that women's participation would raise the moral tone of political life, introducing the true womanly element to everyone's benefit.

Una Marson

UM became the first black woman to take part in the Congress of the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship, which took place at Istanbul in Turkey this year.
Jarrett-Macauley, Delia. The Life of Una Marson, 1905-65. Manchester University Press, 1998.
87
Umoren, Imaobong. “Una Marson 1905-65”. Women’s History Network Blog, 29 May 2011.

Flora Macdonald Mayor

FMM wrote Miss Browne's Friend—A Story of Two Women, a book published in serial form in the Free Church Suffrage Times.
Morgan, Janet. “Introduction: The Squire’s Daughter”. The Rector’s Daughter, Virago, 1987, p. v - xii.
xix

Eliza Meteyard

Her death was caused by the neglect of a chill
Lightbown, Ronald W., and Eliza Meteyard. “Introduction”. The Life of Josiah Wedgwood, Cornmarket Press, 1970.
caught during a visit to London to see an exhibit of Wedgwood's work. It is believed that she died in the arms of Caroline A. White (the author of Sweet Hampstead and Its Associations).
Lightbown, Ronald W., and Eliza Meteyard. “Introduction”. The Life of Josiah Wedgwood, Cornmarket Press, 1970.
On 10 April 1879, EM was buried in Woking Cemetery.
Boase, Frederic. Modern English Biography. F. Cass, 1965, 6 vols.
858
Her friend William Woodall , MP, the head of the suffrage faction in Parliament, oversaw her literary affairs following her death.
Mitchell, Sally. The Fallen Angel: Chastity, Class and Women’s Reading 1835-1880. Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1981.
187

Viola Meynell

VM 's childhood home was a cultural centre for Roman Catholics such as the poets Francis Thompson and Coventry Patmore . She was influenced by her parents' literary activities, as well as by her mother's involvement with various suffrage organisations. Though one visitor recalled that all seven children wrote poetry, Viola's writing repeatedly expresses a sense of having been overshadowed by her parents.
Farjeon, Annabel. Morning has Broken: A Biography of Eleanor Farjeon. Julia MacRae, 1986.
276
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
153
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.

Naomi Mitchison

Linchwe extended suffrage to women in the new Constitution governing his tribe, and he and NM urged women to use birth control and to acquire education.
Benton, Jill. Naomi Mitchison: A Biography. Pandora, 1992.
157-8

Elizabeth Montagu

The term bluestocking very quickly came to imply dismissiveness, if not actual disapproval and contempt. The first to use it pejoratively may well have been, as Gary Kelly has suggested, those who felt threatened or excluded; the usage soon spread to include Thomas Moore (M. P.; or, The Bluestockings, 1811) and Byron (The Blues: A Literary Eclogue, 1821).
Pohl, Nicole, and Betty Schellenberg. “Introduction: A Bluestocking Historiography”. Reconsidering the Bluestockings, edited by Nicole Pohl and Betty Schellenberg, Huntington Library, 2003, pp. 1-19.
5
Mary Russell Mitford employed it in a derogatory manner typical of this trend in 1820. Meeting a seven-year-old prodigy touted by a boastful mother, she remarked that the child's pedantry, and self-conceit, and ignorance seemed effectively to qualify her as a bluestocking.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers, 1870, 2 vols.
1: 326
Since that date the word has been periodically recuperated during periods of feminist consciousness (during the struggle for suffrage, for instance), only to fall victim afresh to generalised social prejudice against intellectual women.

L. M. Montgomery

Although one Boston magazine described her as a conservative in politics, with no favour for woman suffrage,
qtd. in
Gillen, Mollie. The Wheel of Things. Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1975.
85
LMM argued that a woman with property of her own should have a voice in making the laws.
qtd. in
Gillen, Mollie. The Wheel of Things. Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1975.
86
She did think the majority of women would be happiest at home, but she firmly advocated education for girls in an 1896 article written for the Halifax Herald. There she celebrates the fact that nowadays . . . a girl is no longer shut out from the Temple of Knowledge simply because she is a girl.
qtd. in
Gillen, Mollie. The Wheel of Things. Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1975.
87
Women in the Maritimes had access to education for some thirty years before LMM wrote her article. Nova Scotia in 1864 introduced the Free School Act which made public schooling available to a greater number of children, and Mount Allison University —one of the first to do so—began admitting women as early as 1862.
“A History of Nova Scotia’s School Boards”. Nova Scotia School Boards Association: History.
Ambrozas, Diana. “The University as Public Sphere”. Canadian Journal of Communications (CJC) Online, Vol.
23
, No. 1, 1998.

Judith Sargent Murray

When she and her family withheld taxes from the Congregational Church, goods were impounded from them and sold at auction for much less than they were worth.
Skemp, Sheila L. Judith Sargent Murray. A Brief Biography with Documents. Bedford Books, 1998.
25
Resistance by withholding taxes, recently practised by American colonists against the British, was to be important a century later in suffrage activism.

Elma Napier

EN 's family was Conservative, but she was brought up unpolitically.
Napier, Elma. Youth Is a Blunder. J. Cape, 1948.
158
Her early lack of exposure to politics may have had something to do with her non-involvement in the suffrage movement. In her late forties and early fifties EN reflected on her past apoliticism, writing, It is a source of shame to me now that I did nothing for votes for women. Secretly, I admired the militants . . . but wherever I went they were execrated. . . . Something desperately important passed me by.
Napier, Elma. Youth Is a Blunder. J. Cape, 1948.
158

Carola Oman

Having worked before her marriage with the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants (founded by Octavia Hill ), Mary Oman worked in Oxford for innumerable charities including the Church Missionary Society .
Oman, Carola. An Oxford Childhood. Hodder and Stoughton, 1976.
112
She supported the anti-suffragist reaction, and attended her first Anti-Suffrage meeting in 1905.
Oman, Carola. An Oxford Childhood. Hodder and Stoughton, 1976.
90
She preferred boys to girls, and disapproved of Jane Austenas she did not care for joking on serious subjects, such as getting husbands for a pack of girls, and one of them refusing a clergyman.
Oman, Carola. An Oxford Childhood. Hodder and Stoughton, 1976.
113

By 15 August 1914
Irish suffrage organisations established...

Irish suffrage organisations established an emergency council to organize war-relief work while continuing to promote the cause of women's suffrage; the Irish Women's Franchise League refused to participate.
Luddy, Maria, editor. Women in Ireland, 1800-1918: A Documentary History. Cork University Press, 1995.
279
Owens, Rosemary Cullen. Smashing Times: A History of the Irish Women’s Suffrage Movement 1889-1922. Attic, 1984.
97, 141n4
Luddy, Maria, editor. Women in Ireland, 1800-1918: A Documentary History. Cork University Press, 1995.
279

26 July 1913
The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies...

The National Union of Women's Suffrage SocietiesWomen's Pilgrimage culminated in London with a meeting in Hyde Park.
Hume, Leslie Parker. The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, 1897-1914. Garland, 1982.
199
Tickner, Lisa. The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907-1914. University of Chicago Press, 1988.
145-7

27 April 1909
The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies...

The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies organized the Pageant of Women's Trades and Professions.
Tickner, Lisa. The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907-1914. University of Chicago Press, 1988.
100
Webb, Catherine. The Woman with the Basket: The History of the Women’s Co-operative Guild 1883-1927. Co-operative Wholesale Society’s Printing Works, 1927.
98-9
Webb gives the date as 27 May 1909.

21 August 1911
The Irish Women's Suffrage Federation was...

The Irish Women's Suffrage Federation was founded by Louie Bennett and Helen Chenevix to link smaller suffrage organisations operating across Ireland.
Owens, Rosemary Cullen. Smashing Times: A History of the Irish Women’s Suffrage Movement 1889-1922. Attic, 1984.
42-3
Moody, Theodore William et al., editors. A New History of Ireland. Clarendon, 1976–2024, 10 vols.
8: 383
Murphy, Cliona. The Women’s Suffrage Movement and Irish Society in the Early Twentieth Century. Temple University Press, 1989.
25-7