Since it appeared amidst heady discussions regarding the Woman Question, including questions about marriage, female employment, rational dress, and suffrage, the book's lighthearted, humorous tone belies its covertly subversive potential. MMD does not attempt a treatise on the equality of men and women; instead she describes female autonomy and self-sufficiency through her story of a woman travelling alone with no need for a gentleman's assistance. Her only overt statement about gender occurs in her preface to the fourth edition of the book, when she argues for the socially-constructed nature of men and women alike, writing: Men and women, grown in the same conditions of air, light, and nutriment, will be found of equal gifts if they be compared . . . for a practical experiment [let us try] to sell grass some day: pluck a handful for sample from the open meadow, and another from beneath a grey yard-tile; is there any one who will expect this latter handful to make good sweet hay?

View reference

Dowie, Ménie Muriel. A Girl in the Karpathians. George Philip & Son.

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SJD attended a Woman Suffrage Convention.

She also served as a vice-president of the West of England National Society for Woman's Suffrage .

GE was always ambivalent about the struggle for women's rights. This ambivalence may have been fed by the fact that her situation with Lewes made her peculiarly vulnerable to public attack of a personal flavour. The divided nature of her views is well captured in two comments she made to the same correspondent, prominent feminist Clementia Taylor . Having declared her sympathy with the desire to see women socially elevated—educated equally with men, she gently rebuked her friend years later for having failed to understand that I have grave reasons for not speaking on certain public topics. Her function, she said, was that of the aesthetic, not the doctrinal teacher—the rousing of the nobler emotions, which make mankind desire the social right, not the prescribing of special measures. She did, however, write in her meditation on the movement to improve women's lot: Unfortunately, many over-zealous champions of women assert their actual equality with men—nay, even their moral superiority to men—as a ground for their release from oppressive laws and restrictions. They lose strength immensely by this false position. If it were true, then there would be a case in which slavery and ignorance nourished virtue, and so far we should have an argument for the continuance of bondage.

View reference

Eliot, George. Essays of George Eliot. Editor Pinney, Thomas, Columbia University Press.

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She signed and sought further signatures for Barbara Leigh Smith 's Married Women's Property petition, which she saw as a counteractive to wife-beating and other evils. She attended some lectures at Bedford College for Women and supported the cause of women's education in practical ways (like small gifts of money to the fund being raised for Girton College ), but she held back from the suffrage question.

The text addresses a number of issues affecting women, including suffrage, inadequate incomes, divorce legislation, and attitudes toward motherhood. Farr's immersion in mysticism and the occult is often evident, as when she advises her women readers to look forward to the great century that is waiting for their alchemy, or encourages them to tap into their torpid or vegetative consciousness. The book suffers from its dependence on eugenic and racist theories; its preface, for instance, attributes the degradation of women to the white races' adoption of the Assyrian Semite's Scriptures and suggests that [w]omen have a very long score to settle with the Jews and the Mahommedans . . . I can only hope that it was ignorance and not malice that led the Jews and the Arabs to spread false doctrine on the subject of sex.

Katharine and Edith joined the University College debating society, where they tried out their arguments in favour of women's suffrage and the anti-vivisection movement—they were involved in both causes for several years.

Ford Madox Hueffer (later Ford) , as a self-styled ardent, . . . enraged, suffragette, published a suffrage pamphlet, This Monstrous Regiment of Women, with the Minerva Publishing Co. for the Women's Freedom League .

CFT 's first novel shows an interest in the position of the working classes that seems to have been intensified after her marriage and move to Jarrow. She found in her husband, the educated and book-loving Edward Thomas Liddell , a sympathetic partner. A Christian socialist, a liberal, a champion of the poor in his parish work, and a supporter of female suffrage, he persuaded her early in their relationship to read John Stuart Mill 's The Subjection of Women.

The impact of the exhibition, however, was lasting. Hermione Lee makes a link between the exhibition and Woolf's famous remark that in December 1910, human character changed. Lee also observes that the rhetoric of hostility to the suffrage movement and the Post-Impressionist exhibition was astonishingly similar . . . the shock of the new sprang from fears about sexual identity, racial and national survival.

Without supporting any political party, EG held conservative political views throughout her life. She opposed the suffrage movement during its struggle, but years later, writing her autobiography with an eye to posterity, she revised her earlier views to see herself as a member of the band of pioneers in the cause of feminine emancipation who laboured so earnestly . . . to free the souls and bodies of women from the heavy age-old trammels of custom and convention. During her time in Egypt she became a strong advocate of British Imperialism, whose ideals upheld her notions of autocracy, aristocratic rule, class hierarchies, and Victorian morality. She particularly admired Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer , the British Consul in Egypt. Her comment in her autobiography—that his sagacious rule ensured not merely the political dominance of the British, but also the maintenance of a stately, dignified, yet gay social life—exemplifies her habit of subordinating the political to the social.

MG occasionally contributed to the Workers' Republic (1898-1916), founded by James Connolly , with whom she wrote and distributed a pamphlet entitled The Rights of Life and the Rights of Property, 1897. She also contributed to several other journals, notably to Shan Van Vocht (1896-April 1899), which was edited by Alice Milligan and Anna Johnston from Belfast, and whose title, meaning poor old woman, is a reference to Mother Ireland). She later wrote for the Irish Worker (1911-1914); for Irish Citizen (1912-1920), suffrage journal of the Irish Women's Franchise League , edited by Francis and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington (for which MG wrote My Experiences in Prison); for the republican An Phoblacht (1925-1937); and for the IRA 's Saoirse na hÉireann (1931).

She opposed vivisection and maintained an interest in the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals . She also, while recognizing the supreme claims of home upon her own sex, felt the importance of maintaining the sacredness of the common rights of women as the citizens of a free nation, and vocally supported women's suffrage.

As she later told the story, her agent suggested a book (in connection with the fiftieth anniversary of the Representation of the People Act of 6 February 1918, when women got the vote) on why female suffrage failed. Greer responded with anger, but then her publisher friend Sonny Mehta offered her an advance of £750 (one-third payable on signing the contract) for a similar book. An excerpt appeared before publication in Oz, amid sexist visuals, one of them captioned Men! Don't let women's liberation blackmail you.MacGibbon and Kee , the initial London publishers, realised the book's international potential; they sold the rights in Italy and Germany, then the rights for the US to McGraw-Hill for $29,000, then the paperback rights to Bantam for $135,000. Like many high-earning British authors of this date and earlier, Greer found her steeply increased income brought its penalties: by 1979 she was facing a lawsuit from the Inland Revenue for £20,000 in unpaid tax on earnings which she claimed she had never received. Meanwhile, by the beginning of 1971 there had to be monthly reprintings to keep up with demand. The Paladin paperback of that year carried the unforgettable cover, designed by John Holmes , of a naked female torso, headless and limbless, literally hung out to dry.

Editorial policy was to avoid anything controversial in mainstream politics. The magazine never mentioned the Civil War during the course of the conflict. In contrast to the Ladies' Magazine, the new one had a greater emphasis on fashion and light topics as well as reflecting its editor's interest in education and literature. SJH has been read later as a proponent of the cult of true womanhood and leading exponent of the doctrine of the feminine sphere. She lent the support of the magazine, however, to reforms in women's education and property rights, and improved opportunities for them in general, although she did not approve of the movement for woman suffrage. The magazine pioneered the use of illustrations (domestic scenes, fashion plates, needlework patterns). In 1861 its cover featured paired pictures which link an anonymous woman engaged in some useful employment with a publicly-known woman like Florence Nightingale or Dorothea Dix . Hale's policy of commissioning work rather than merely writing it herself or reprinting from elsewhere made the magazine a valuable outlet for other writers.Harriet Beecher Stowe was a contributor early in her career; Frances Hodgson Burnett first reached print in the magazine's columns; other authors to appear there were Lydia Sigourney , Nathaniel Hawthorne , and Edgar Allan Poe .

In addition to working for the friendless and fallen, she worked for women's rights in many areas (such as employment), although she opposed female suffrage. She was also active in the temperance movement.

Her main areas of interest in writings for Hirst were women's suffrage and reform of the poor law. She contributed to the monthly War and Peace (1913-18) as well as to Common Sense, and she left Common Sense, in about 1920, only when it was about to fold. After this, briefly, she worked for Philip Gibbs on the Review of Reviews—where almost her first duty was to deputise for Gibbs as editor during three months which he spent in the USA. It was, she said, magnanimous of him to appoint her, since she had first come to his notice in connection with a piece she wrote for Time and Tide which was critical of him .

Gender roles are explored in a range of ways throughout Adrienne Hope. Lord Charles's sophisticated sister has spent considerable time with men: her experience makes her wary of protestations of love. The woman writer Miss Reay is the novel's most outspoken feminist—she claims this is because her independent position makes it possible for her to speak what many women feel in silence—who responds to Lord Charles's sneer about women MPs: I am quite sure that until women have a voice in framing the laws which particularly affect themselves, they will continue to bear, as they do now, unjustly upon them. The law of master and slave is always oppressive to the latter; and that, with some modification, is still the relative position of man and woman. Until quite lately a married woman was only a chattel—a piece of goods—as absolutely belonging to her husband as the table he dined from or the coat upon his back. No amount of brutality on his part could free her from the bondage . . . . The new Divorce Court has mended this state of things, and the protection it affords to the earnings of married women is a step in the right direction; but women were chiefly instrumental in obtaining this.

View reference

Hays, Matilda. Adrienne Hope. T. Cautley Newby.

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An MP himself and the novel's chief villain, Lord Charles exemplifies both the reasons why women require suffrage, and the ways in which the selfishness bred in men leads to tragedy. Female unselfishness is pointed up throughout, particularly in the sympathy his two wives have for each other, though they never meet.

BH here gives a sketch of Botswanan history, making the point wryly that its experience of British imperialism was benign, for the reason that it had nothing to attract conquerors and settlers, being drought-ridden land which was valued only as a passageway to areas erroneously believed to be potentially rich in gold mines. Social change came gradually, with widespread adoption of Christianity and western clothes. Political independence arrived together with women's suffrage. Only the bogadi or bride-price endured in various covert forms, encouraging men to look on women as assets to be acquired and exploited. Now family life, she wrote, was in crisis, and even highly literate women . . . talk in uncertain terms of their lives and fear to assert themselves.

His sister Clemence Annie Housman (1861-1955) became a novelist and a wood-engraver who trained at the City and Guilds College . She joined the Women's Social and Political Union and threw herself into the suffrage struggle with a will.

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. 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.

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.

GJ 's political thought was full of contradictions, at times celebrating emancipated women and at others criticizing them. 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. 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. 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. 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. She was an advocate for the education of women and of the working classes, and in her own behaviour she challenged convention on several fronts, for instance by smoking cigars and swearing.

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.

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).