FK
's only documented political engagement occured in the summer of 1869, when both she and Charles Kingsley attended a Women's Suffrage meeting in London at the invitation of John Stuart Mill
, whose book The Subjection of Women both Charles and Fanny admired. In a letter to Mill dated June 17, 1869, Charles Kingsley writes: Mrs. Kingsley begs me to add the expression of her respect for you. Her opinion has long been that this movement must be furthered rather by men than by the women themselves. He also credits her as a significant influence on his intellectual life and opinions about the roles of women, saying: That I should ever have found out what I seem to know without the guidance of a woman, and that woman my wife, I dare not assert. He declares himself open to any teaching which has for its purpose the doing woman justice in every respect.
Kingsley, Charles, 1819 - 1875. Charles Kingsley: His Letters and Memories of His Life. Editor Kingsley, Fanny, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1877.
2: 295
After the meeting, they were house guests of Mill. While Charles Kingsley was highly sympathetic to the suffrage movement, he was repelled by any militant tactics; Colloms attributes a similar attitude to FK
.
Colloms, Brenda. Charles Kingsley: The Lion of Eversley. Constable, 1975.
308-11
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Frances Eliza Kingsley
Kingsley, Charles, 1819 - 1875. Charles Kingsley: His Letters and Memories of His Life. Editor Kingsley, Fanny, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1877.
American Rebecca Harding Davis
published a novel with the same title five years later, which later again caused Kortright's anti-suffrage panmphlet Pro Aris et Focis to be, embarrassingly, ascribed to Davis.
ML
, author of seven novels published between 1912 and 1929, used her fiction to discuss issues of marriage, women's suffrage, the difficulty of an older generation in adapting to modern life, and utopianism presented in the guise of fantasy. Her heroines tend to seek independence but choose to be protected; happy endings are often combined with deaths or changes of partner; the only consistent thread seems to be dissatisfaction with the status quo.
She writes as a moderate, promulgating the concept of separate spheres for the two sexes, but wishing that middle-class women might extend to boys the education they currently administered to girls: a training based on religion and morality rather than the amoral, intellect-based education currently available to boys. She expresses a belief in women's moral superiority to men, but does not support the cause of women's suffrage. She notes: we are . . . anxious . . . that women should be roused to a sense of their own importance; but we affirm, that it is not so much social institutions that are wanting to women, but women who are wanting to themselves.
Lewis, Sarah. Woman’s Mission. William Crosby, 1840.
11
Her high value for the state of marriage leads her to advocate better employment opportunities for women, so that they should not be forced by need to marry for the wrong reasons.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
CM
had two circles of political friends: that of her brother John, which included members of the Society of the Supporters of the Bill of Rights
, and that of the Real Whigs, who were mostly dissenters and some of them republicans.
Hill, Bridget. The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian. Clarendon Press, 1992.
16-17
CM
's own republican views, and her reformist brand of patriotism, were formed during the years of Wilkes
's greatest political struggle, though she was again unusual in positioning herself between the Real Whigs and the Wilkites, who were in general a separate group.
Hill, Bridget. “Daughter and Mother: Some new light on Catharine Macaulay and her family”. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
22
, No. 1, 1 Mar.–31 May 1999, pp. 35-49.
53, 57
Like Thomas Hollis
, she believed that the struggles of the English seventeenth century had been the forming-ground of republicanism as a serious alternative to monarchy.
Hill, Bridget. The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian. Clarendon Press, 1992.
165
She favoured a more extended and equal power of election,
qtd. in
Hill, Bridget. The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian. Clarendon Press, 1992.
177
but probably did not envisage universal suffrage, let alone women's suffrage.
She had also studied English and modern history during her degree. In her first year she discovered Jane Ellen Harrison
's Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903). Harrison's work, which suggests that the ancient Greeks worshipped not only gods, but also conceptions of the human mind, introduced WM
to notions of the unconscious.
Muir, Willa. Belonging. Hogarth Press, 1968.
13-14
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Allen, Kirsty, and Willa Muir. “Introduction”. Imagined Selves, edited by Kirsty Allen and Kirsty Allen, Canongate Classics, 1996, p. v - xiii.
vi
and participated in the Women's Debating Society
and the Students' Representative Council
. During her degree course she won the Berry Scholarship in Classics. Two of her teachers promised to coach her for the Ferguson, which would have funded classical study at the British School in Rome. She never received the latter scholarship because, she later said, in the ecstasy of first love, I could not be so widely separated from my sweetheart.
Muir, Willa. Belonging. Hogarth Press, 1968.
26
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
She was a Liberal (who canvassed for the Gladstone
supporter George Granville Leveson-Gower
when he stood—unsuccessfully—for East Marylebone in 1889), a supporter of Irish Home Rule, a member of the Somerville Club
for women, and a suffragist who lent her public-speaking expertise to the cause.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Gower
Hughes, William Richard et al. Constance Naden: A Memoir. Bickers and Son, 1890.
51
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
NCB
's feminism manifests itself in her writings celebrating female sexuality and her activities promoting women writers, but she was mildly critical of English suffragists for sacrificing their femininity in their struggle for women's rights: Les Anglaises ont gagné le suffrage en devenant des hommes. On n'est pas toujours libre du choix des armes.
Barney, Natalie Clifford. Aventures de l’esprit. Émile-Paul Frères, 1929.
194
Translation: Englishwomen won the vote by becoming men. One is not always free to choose one's weapons.
During the First World War NCB
was a committed pacifist, but during the Second she supported the Fascists, and, in spite of being one-quarter Jewish, expressed objectionable, anti-semitic views.
Benstock, Shari. Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940. University of Texas Press, 1986.
In 1920 EMB
was listed as a regular contributor to the Woman's Supplement of The Times.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
42568 (15 November 1920): 14
On 31 October 1929, in the continuing aftermath of Katherine Mayo
's book Mother India, Bell wrote to The Times to disagree with Eleanor Rathbone
(very respectfully: Rathbone's reputation for fair play and sincerity needs no defence from me) and to urge unity and co-operation among those working for the betterment of Indian women.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
45348 (31 October 1929): 10
When suffrage for some but not all Indian women was being discussed, she wrote again to argue that widows of soldiers killed on active service certainly deserved the vote.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
46304 (30 November 1932): 8
Having written repeatedly to The Times on the issue of Indian women's education, she went on to send a short note about counting one's blessings during the second world war, and a strong objection (following the lead of Phyllis Deakin
) to the way the War Injuries Compensation Scheme
doled out more money for an injured man than an injured woman. This form of the broader practice of unequal pay, EMB
argued, was indefensible since medical services charged no less for women patients; single women often have dependent parents; disabled men are frequently able (as women are not) to secure the services of a wife; and the humanity common to both sexes has a right to relief.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
Bentley was the first person in her family to receive such an extensive and expensive education: none of her brothers went beyond the secondary school level, and it was understood that Cheltenham was preparation for university. Her mother saved from her dress allowance for years to enable her daughter to go away to school, in the hope that this would advance Phyllis socially. Phyllis loved the ritual and order of Cheltenham, where she boarded at Bunwell House. She added French, music and elocution to her studies, and enjoyed playing cricket and hockey. After receiving her mother's written permission, she heard Emmeline Pankhurst
lecture on women's suffrage and was rather perplexed by [her] vehemence.
Bentley, Phyllis. "O Dreams, O Destinations". Gollancz, 1962.
77
Bentley, Phyllis. "O Dreams, O Destinations". Gollancz, 1962.
67, 74-5
At the end of her two years at Cheltenham she passed the Matriculation and Intermediate Arts examinations for London University
. Working for a London external degree was then possible at Cheltenham, but this option would have been too expensive, so in summer 1912 she returned home to Halifax to study on her own. She was back at Cheltenham for four terms between September 1913 and December 1914.
Bentley, Phyllis. "O Dreams, O Destinations". Gollancz, 1962.
The author at the heart of this story is a children's writer, Olive Wellwood, who is married to a wealthy banker and lives in a Kentish farmhouse strangely called Todefright. The actual Edith Nesbit
, J. M. Barrie
, Kenneth Grahame
, and William Morris
, all make cameo appearances. The Wellwood children and their London cousins, as well as Philip Warren, working-class boy who has left his Potteries home in search of a wider world, each get a book especially written and designed for them. Childhood is, however, as much shadowed as idyllic here, and the whole story (freighted with dense information about Victorian museums and banking, the Arts and Crafts and suffrage movements) moves inexorably towards the brink of the Great War.
Although The Making of Rachel Rowe was not positively reviewed when it was first published, recent commentators like Margaret Bradstock
and Louise Wakeling
have praised the novel's compassionate depiction of Rachel's socially unacceptable status as an unwed mother. They argue that ACshows considerable growth in understanding . . . the unmarried mother, and that although her novel displays clear limits to social acceptance because Rachel is eventually morally rehabilitated by marriage, it nevertheless demonstrates a great sensitivity to human error.
Bradstock, Margaret, and Louise Wakeling. Rattling the Orthodoxies: A Life of Ada Cambridge. Penguin, 1991.
211
Bradstock and Wakeling also underscore the positive portrayal of a suffragette in the briefly-introduced character of Esther Helstone, who, they argue, reveals AC
's growing feminist sympathies. This novel, while not dealing centrally with the women's suffrage struggle, none the less evidences that Cambridge was one middle-class liberal who did sympathizes, whatever reservations she must inevitably have had about the strategies used by the more militant suffragettes in their campaign.
Bradstock, Margaret, and Louise Wakeling. Rattling the Orthodoxies: A Life of Ada Cambridge. Penguin, 1991.
210
While several stereotypes of the suffragette operate in AC
's text, she had at least begun to see the value and necessity behind the suffragettes' cause.
Bradstock, Margaret, and Louise Wakeling. Rattling the Orthodoxies: A Life of Ada Cambridge. Penguin, 1991.
211
Bradstock, Margaret, and Louise Wakeling. Rattling the Orthodoxies: A Life of Ada Cambridge. Penguin, 1991.
Though without particular ability, Theodore gets his Fellowship at his college, St Mary's. He is then elected Warden. But before his new dignity can give him self-confidence, he learns that he was elected purely in order to keep out the alternative candidates: the power-hungry Dr Quears who would champion any cause—Morris Dancing, Woman's Suffrage—in order to have something more to control,
Cannan, Joanna. High Table. Oxford University Press, 1987.
89
and the genuinely eminent Professor Haughton, who, however, has bohemian manners, writes sporting fiction and laughs uproariously at his own Rabelaisian jokes.
Cannan, Joanna. High Table. Oxford University Press, 1987.
The Journal comes out unabashedly in support of some causes, such as early closing, the education of young women, and the sanitary movement. EC
criticises the growing income gap between rich and poor, favouring legislation to redress the miseries of dressmakers as well as lauding the poor who help themselves, for instance through Working-Class Benefit Societies, and seeks to draw attention to child abuse (she counsels never striking children). Though many of her poems about labour use masculinist vocabulary (man and boy, father and son), she also writes specifically of women's labour (her hand grows hard with duty)
qtd. in
Yan, Shu-chuan. “’When Common Voices Speak’: Labour, Poetry and Eliza Cook”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
22
, No. 4, Nov. 2015, pp. 428-54.
440
and many of the causes she takes up are women's causes. Indeed, Eliza Cook's Journal takes a proto-feminist approach (feminist according to historian Kathryn Gleadle
), supporting issues such as married women's property law reform, and (as in The Wrongs of Englishwomen in October 1850) extending its analysis to women at all social levels. It stops short, however, of supporting suffrage.
Mitchell, Sally, editor. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. Garland Press, 1988.
Later in life CFC
's initial interest in law continued to show itself through her involvement in crime prevention policies. Her favourite proposal was for the creation of ragged schools where all children could be given free education, provided with meals, and trained in trades. CFC
believed that equal education would pave the way for granting suffrage to both genders and all classes equally.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Although she took clear stands on feminist issues in her writing, DMC
considered herself absolutely non-political. Ladies' Land League
s, Primrose Habitation
s, Female Suffrage Societies, are to me equally obnoxious.
Late in her career, she claimed that men and women, though different, are equal.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. About Money and Other Things. Macmillan, 1886.
17
But she also wrote: Very few women can take care of themselves, to say nothing of other people. Some say this is the fault of Nature, some of education—a centuries-long education into helpless subservience. Whichever theory is right, or perhaps half-right and half-wrong, the result is the same.
Craik, Dinah Mulock. About Money and Other Things. Macmillan, 1886.
Before she withdrew from public feminist activities in 1870, IC
lent her support to the early women's suffrage movement and the campaign for women's higher education.
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.
Hirsch, Pam. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon 1827-1891: Feminist, Artist and Rebel. Chatto and Windus, 1998.
221-2, 244
After 1870 she directed her energies to publishing novels, didactic literature, and educational books for children. Her publications reflect her interest in issues related to working-class moral reform, such as temperance and Sabbath Day Observance.
The opening features a stalwart figure who lands an airplane in front of an old English manor house in the thirtieth century, tinkers with the engine, smokes a pipe, enters the house with the air of its owner, and calls out: Hello, darling! Here I am again!
Cross, Victoria. Martha Brown, M.P. T. Werner Laurie, 1935.
7-8
Only after this does the text reveals that this is the woman of the title, Member of Parliament, Martha Brown: a magnificent specimen of bronzed womanhood.
Cross, Victoria. Martha Brown, M.P. T. Werner Laurie, 1935.
8
VC
depicts a society in which gender roles are completely reversed, in England at least: women run the government (and levy an income tax of eighteen shillings on the pound) and men, such as Martha's husband James (one of her four in this exploration of polyandry), tend to look after the children (in which activity Martha, for one, takes no interest) and have hobbies such as writing novels, although exceptionally gifted men can still occupy important positions such as that of Censor of plays. The novel's extended reversal of gender roles defamiliarizes them, and it makes other serious points along the way, demonstrating that here female suffrage has done away with cruelty, unemployment, prostitution, vivisection, meat-eating, the adulteration of food (now a capital offence), pollution, and even representations of violence or misery. Martha herself has abolished prisons by advocating the execution of the unreformable. The novel describes James's growing discontent as a result of her leaving him in the country with the children for extended periods while she pursues an exciting life in London as a celebrated politician and author, a life that includes male lovers whom she keeps. Martha is feeling bored with her life, despite being at the pinnacle of her career, when she falls in love with a virile American man of Scottish descent, Bruce Campbell, who is a marked contrast to the effeminate men she has known. He insists on complete possession of her, arguing that love is a savage thing. It is not a thing of civilization; it is a thing of nature.
Cross, Victoria. Martha Brown, M.P. T. Werner Laurie, 1935.
220
In the end, Martha passes over the offer of the post of Prime Minister in order to follow the man she loves to America, a fate she herself characterizes as civil death.
Cross, Victoria. Martha Brown, M.P. T. Werner Laurie, 1935.