Only be ye strong and very courageous: The militant suffragism of lady constance lytton

Women's History Review

Volumn 7, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 61-84

  Myall, Michelle ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949957591     PISSN: 09612025     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09612029800200165     Document Type: Review

References (60)

1. See, for example, George Dangerfield (1966) The Strange Death of Liberal England (London: MacGibbon & Kee; first published 1935);
2. Roger Fulford (1957) Votes for Women, the Story of a Struggle (London: Faber & Faber);
3. Antonia Raeburn (1973) The Militant Suffragettes (London: Michael Joseph);
4. Andrew Rosen (1974) Rise Up Women (London; Routledge & Kegan Paul);
5. Constance Rover (1967) Women's Suffrage and Party Politics in Britain 1866-1914 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul).
6. See, for example, Barbara Green (1994) From visible flaneuse to spectacular suffragette? The prison, the street, and the sites of suffrage, Discourse, 17, pp. 67-97;
7. Laura E, Nym Mayhall (1995) Creating the 'suffragette spirit': British feminism and the historical imagination, Women's History Review, 4, pp. 319-344;
8. June Purvis (1995) The prison experiences of the suffragettes in Edwardian Britain, Women's History Review, 4, pp. 103-133;
9. Martha Vicinus (1985) Male space and women's bodies: the suffragette movement, in her Independent Women, Work and Community for Single Women, pp. 247-280 (London: Virago).
10. Doris, N. Chew (1982) Ada Nield Chew: the life and writings of a working woman (London: Virago);
11. Jill Liddington & Jill Norris (1978) One Hand Tied Behind Us: the rise of the woman suffrage movement (London: Virago);
12. Jill Liddington (1984) The Life and Times of a Respectable Rebel, Selina Cooper 1864-1946 (London: Virago);
13. Hannah Mitchell (1977) The Hard Way Up (London: Virago).
14. Liddington & Norris One Hand Tied Behind Us, p. 11.
15. See, for example, Rowena Fowler (1991) Why did suffragettes attack works of art, Journal of Women's History, 2, pp. 109-125;
16. Sandra Stanley Holton (1990) In sorrowful wrath: suffrage militancy and the romantic feminism of Emmeline Pankhurst, in H. L. Smith (Ed.) British Feminism in the Twentieth Century, pp. 7-24 (Aldershot: Edward Elgar);
17. Sandra Stanley Holton (1992) The suffragist and the 'average woman', Women's History Review, 1, pp. 9-24;
18. Sandra Stanley Holton (1996) Suffrage Days, Stories from the women's Suffrage Movement (London: Routledge);
19. Maroula Joannou (1995) "She who would be politically free herself must strike the first blow": suffragette autobiography and suffragette militancy, in Julia Swindells (Ed.) The Uses of Autobiography, pp. 31-45 (Basingstoke: Taylor & Francis);
20. Janet Lyon (1992) Militant discourse, strange bedfellows: suffragettes and vorticists before the war, Differences: a Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 4, pp. 100-133;
21. Jane Marcus (Ed.) (1987) Suffrage and the Pankhursts (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul);
22. L. Mayhall, 'Creating the "Suffragette Spirit";
23. June Purvis (1994) A lost dimension? The political education of women in the suffragette movement in Edwardian Britain, Gender and Education, 6, pp. 319-327;
24. June Purvis (1995) 'Deeds, not words': the daily lives of militant WSPU suffragettes in Edwardian Britain, Women's Studies International Forum, 18, pp. 91-101;
25. J. Purvis, The Prison Experiences of the Suffragettes in Edwardian Britain';
26. June Purvis (1996) A "pair of . infernal queens"? A reassessment of Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, first wave feminists in Edwardian Britain, Women's History Review, 5, pp. 259-280;
27. Elizabeth Sarah (1983) Christabel Pankhurst: reclaiming her power, in Dale Spender (Ed.) Feminist Theorists: three centuries of women's intellectual traditions, pp. 256-398 (London: The Women's Press);
28. Liz Stanley & Ann Morley (1988) The Life and Death of Emily Wilding Davison, A BiographicaL Detective Story (London: The Women's Press);
29. M Vicinus, 'Male space and women's bodies'.
30. Stanley & Morley, The Life and Death of Emily Wilding Davison, p. xiii.
31. Les Garner (1990) A Brave and Beautiful Spirit: Dora Marsen, 1882-1960 (Aldershot: Avebury);
32. Angela John (1996) Elizabeth Robins, Staging a Life (London: Routledge);
33. Patricia Romero (1987) E. Sylvia Pankhurst, Portrait of a Radical (New Haven: Yale University Press);
34. Lis Whitelaw (1990) The Life and Rebellious Times of Cicely Hamilton (London: The Women's Press);
35. Barbara Winslow (1996) Sylvia Pankhurst, Sexual Politics and Political Activism (London: UCL Press).
36. Barbara Caine (1994) Feminist biography and feminist history, Women's History Review, 3, pp. 247-263;
37. Holton, The suffragist and the average woman', pp. 9-24.
38. Caine, 'Feminist biography and feminist history', p. 251.
39. The importance of analysing the ways in which accounts of suffrage history in the past have been constructed has been the subject of discussion in the work of a number of feminist historians in recent years. Kathryn Dodd, for example, examines Ray Strachey's classic history of the women's movement, The Cause, arguing that it represented a construction of the past from a political position in the present and thus can only be understood as a text within the broader context of liberal and feminist politics in the immediate interwar years. (Kathryn Dodd [1990] Cultural politics and women's historical writing, Women's Studies International Forum, 13, pp. 127-137). Similarly, Laura Mayhall looks at the way in which the autobiographies of suffrage activists written in the years following the First World War, and the establishment of The Suffragette Fellowship in 1926, whose purpose was to keep alive the memory of the women who had participated in the suffrage campaign, created an authentic narrative of suffrage militancy as defined by imprisonment and forcible feeding. Mayhall argues that this narrative version of suffrage history has been taken up by second wave feminists in their analyses of the women's movement (Mayhall 'Creating the "suffragette spirit'").
40. See also, Hilda Keen (1994) Searching for the past in present defeat: the construction of historical and political identity in British feminism in he 1920s and 1930s, Women's History Review, 3, pp. 57-80, for a discussion on the ways in which former militant suffragettes constructed their historical and political identities in the politically uncertain times of the 1920s and 1930s.
41. Neville Lytton (n.d.) The English Country Gentleman, pp. 201-202 (London: Hurst & Blackett).
42. Lutyens, A Blessed Girl, p. 18.
43. See Betty Balfour (Ed.) (1925) Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 3 (London: William Heinemann).
44. Edward Marsh (1939) A Number of People, A Book of Reminiscence, p. 139 (London: Heinemann).
45. Constance Lytton & Jane Warton, Spinster (1988 reprint edition) Prisons and Prisoners: some personal experiences, p. 1 (London: Virago; first published 1914, London: William Heinemann).
46. C. Lytton, S.J. Warton, Prisons and Prisoners: Some personal experiences, Ibid., p. 2.
47. Lytton, The English Country Gentleman, pp. 198-199.
48. Lytton & Warton, Prisons and Prisoners, pp. 9-30.
49. Glenda Norquay (1995) Voices and Votes: a literary anthology of the women's suffrage campaign, p. 39 (Manchester: Manchester University Press).
50. Norquay, Voices and Votes, p. 13.
51. Letter from Lady Constance Lytton to Mrs C. W. Earle, dated 29 November 1909, in Balfour, Letters of Constance Lytton, pp. 183-184.
52. For an interesting discussion on the role of the Victorian spinster, see Patricia Jalland (1983) Victorian spinsters: dutiful daughters, desperate rebels and the transition to the new women, in Patricia Crawford (Ed.) Exploring Women's Past, pp. 129-170 (London: Allen & Unwin).
53. Votes for Women, 7 January 1910, p. 226.
54. The suffragist disturbances: more convictions at Bow Street, The Times, 25 November 1911, p. 9.
55. See, for example, Comments of the Press, Votes for Women, 3 September 1909, p, 1142;
56. Letter by Lady Constance Lytton from her cell at Newcastle Police Station, The Times, 14 October 1909, p. 6.
57. In her autobiography, Emmeline Pethick Lawrence wrote that in prison women of all classes found a "new comradeship with each other" and that "neither class, nor wealth, nor education counted any more", only working together for the good of the movement mattered (Emmeline Pethick Lawrence [1938] My Part in a Changing World, p. 188 [London: Victor Gollancz]).
58. Vicinus, Independent Women, p. 274.
59. Mary Jean Corbett (1992) Representing Femininity: middle-class subjectivity in Victorian and Edwardian autobiographies, p. 166 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
60. Leonore Davidoff (1973) The Best Dressed Circles, Society Etiquette and the Season, pp. 51-52 (London: Croom Helm).