'What made me a suffragette': The New Woman and the new (?) conversion narrative

Women's History Review

Volumn 12, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 35-50

  Hartman, Kabi ^a  

^a TEMPLE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34247446934     PISSN: 09612025     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09612020300200346     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. The Suffragette, 5 June 1914, p. 128
2. Emmeline Pethick Lawrence (1911) Special Message from Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, Leader of the Demonstration, Votes For Women, 24 November, p. 123
3. Emmeline Pethick Lawrence (1908) What the Vote Means to Those Who are Fighting the Battle, Votes For Women, January, p. 49
4. See Independent Women: work and community for single women 1850-1920, p. 252 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Ann Morley & Liz Stanley (1988) indirectly address the question of the WSPU's religious character through their examination of the issues surrounding Emily Wilding Davison's death
5. See The Life and Death of Emily Wilding Davison: a biographical detective story (London: The Women's Press). More recently, Marie Mulvey-Roberts (2000) confronts questions concerning the 'discourse of religiosity [that] permeated the militants' in her essay on Constance Lytton
6. See Militancy, Masochism or Martyrdom? The Public and Private Prisons of Constance Lytton, in June Purvis & Sandra Stanley Holton (Eds) Votes for Women, pp. 159-180 (London: Routledge). Finally, it is worth mentioning that there is much work yet to be done on the religious imagery and rhetoric used by other branches of the suffrage movement, especially the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS)
7. Peter A. Dorsey (1993) Sacred Estrangement: the rhetoric of conversion in modern American autobiography, p. 3 (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press)
8. Barbara Green (1997) Spectacular Confessions: autobiography, performative activism and the site of suffrage, 1905-1938, p. 5 (New York: St Martin's Press)
9. Emmeline Pethick Lawrence (1911) The Utmost for the Highest: a memoir, Votes for Women, 6 January, p. 229
10. Linda Peterson (1999) writes that spiritual autobiography describes 'a pattern of spiritual progress from bondage in sin and spiritual darkness to enlightenment and victory over the world, flesh, and devil'. Traditions of Victorian Women's Autobiography: the poetics and politics of life writing, p. 6 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia). John N. Morris (1966) characterises the trajectory of spiritual autobiography as an 'experience of despair, crisis, collapse, and rebirth' in Versions of the Self: studies in English autobiography from John Bunyan to John Stuart Mill, p. 7 (New York: Basic Books)
11. Linda Peterson (1986) Victorian Autobiography: the tradition of self interpretation, p. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press). John Stachniewski (1998) writes about Calvinist spiritual autobiography that 'the theology determined a reading practice which turned the Bible itself into the ultimate book of signs: it was sifted for its binary application to the reader's own life'. Stachniewski, introduction to John Bunyan (1666) Grace Abounding, p. xii (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
12. Dorsey, Sacred Estrangement, pp. 32-33
13. Emmeline Pethick Lawrence (1907) The Battle Cry, Votes for Women, October, p. 6
14. Emmeline Pethick Lawrence (1908) The Crusade, Votes for Women, 11 June, pp. 232-233
15. Emmeline Pethick Lawrence (1910) Behold I Make All Things New, Votes for Women, 7 January, p. 232
16. E. Pethick Lawrence, 'What the Vote Means', p. 49
17. E. Pethick Lawrence, 'The Crusade', p. 233
18. Stephen Yeo (1977) A New Life: the religion of socialism in Britain, 1883-1896, History Workshop, 4, pp. 5-56
19. See also Mark Bevir (1999) The Labour Church Movement, 1891-1902, Journal of British Studies, 38, pp. 217-245. The quotation about workers being 'gaunt Christs' is found in Yeo, p. 1, and is originally from Fred Henderson's poem, 'The Cry', which was printed in the periodical, Worker's Cry, May 1891, p. 1. The similarities between suffragette and Labour movement discourse are uncanny, and a subject for another paper
20. Keir Hardie (1892) The Christianity of Christ, The Labour Prophet, 1, p. 86
21. Betty Balfour (Ed.) (1925) Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 159 (London: William Heinemann). Letter from Lytton's sister, Emily Lutyens, to her 'Aunt T.' on 26 March 1909
22. Balfour, Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 155. From Balfour's introduction
23. Emmeline Pethick Lawrence (1910) Lady Constance Lytton, Votes for Women, Friday, 28 January, p. 280
24. See Williston Walker, Richard A. Norris, David W. Lotz & Robert T. Handy (Eds) (1985 4th edn) A History of the Christian Church, pp. 640-641 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons; first published 1918), and Clyde L. Manschreck (Ed.) (1981 reprint edition) A History of Christianity, vol. 2, pp. 412-413 (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House Company; first published 1964, New York: Prentice-Hall)
25. Emmeline Pethick Lawrence (1910) The Scottish Exhibition, Votes for Women, 29 April 1910, p. 494
26. Constance Lytton (1976 reprint edition) Prisons and Prisoners: experiences of a suffragette, p. 14 (East Ardsley: EP Publishing; first published 1914, London: William Heinemann)
27. Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 15
28. Ethel Smyth (1910) Better Late Than Never, Votes for Women, 18 November, p. 99
29. E.J. Hatfield (1913) The Awakening of Pauline Farrer, Votes for Women, 31 October, p. 65
30. Annie Kenney (1907) To the Women of Germany, Votes for Women, October, p. 3
31. Votes for Women, 18 June 1908, p. 254
32. Kenney, 'To the Women of Germany', p. 3
33. Annie Kenney (1924) Memories of a Militant, p. 28 (London: Edward Arnold)
34. Emmeline Pethick Lawrence (1909) A Calendar of Saints, Votes for Women, 5 November, p. 89
35. I am grateful to Dr Rosie Miles for calling my attention to the play between light and dark in this illustration when I presented a shorter version of this article at the 'Feminist Forerunners' conference in July 2000 in Manchester, England
36. Constance Elizabeth Maud (1912) No Surrender, p. 273 (New York: John Lane)
37. Constance Lytton (1910) A Message to Friends and Foes, Votes for Women, 22 April, p. 479
38. Lytton, 'A Message to Friends and Foes', p. 479
39. Gertrude Colmore (1984 reprint edition) Suffragettes: a story of three women, pp. 273-274 (London: Pandora Press; first published 1911 as Suffragette Sally)
40. Maud, No Surrender, pp. 271-272
41. Mabel Capper (1910) A Modern Calvary, Votes for Women, 25 March, p. 407
42. Edith Zangwill (1924) The Call, in Glenda Norquay (Ed.) Voices and Votes: a literary anthology of the women's suffrage campaign, p. 49 (Manchester: Manchester University Press)
43. Morris, Versions of the Self, p. 3
44. R.H. Hutton (1894) The Metaphysics of Conversion, quoted in Jerome Hamilton Buckley (1969) The Victorian Temper: a study in literary culture, p. 92 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press)
45. Florence Nightingale (1852) Cassandra, included as Appendix I in Ray Strachey (1989 reprint edition) The Cause: a short history of the women's movement in Great Britain, p. 416 (London: Virago; first published 1928, London: G. Bell & Sons)
46. See, for example, Gertrude Colmore, Suffragettes, chapter XXI ('The Advocate'), and Stanley & Morley, Life and Death of Emily Wilding Davison, chapter 5, 'Militancy'
47. See, for example, Marie Mulvey-Roberts (2000) Militancy, Masochism or Martyrdom? The Public and Private Prisons of Constance Lytton, in June Purvis & Sandra Stanley Holton (Eds) Votes for Women, pp. 159-180 (London: Routledge)
48. Dorsey, Sacred Estrangements, p. 6