Women's suffrage movement in Britain 1866-1928

Active in both the women's suffrage movement and local politics, musician and Gaelic song-collector Marjory Kennedy-Fraser started promoting Scottish Independence, widely discussed at present but front-page news also a century ago, eventually becoming one of its figureheads.

Having begun collecting Hebridean songs in 1905, fired by an ambition both to preserve the musical riches of the Scottish Gaeldom – then considered backward and culturally barren – and to present the material to a wider audience, Kennedy-Fraser gradually evolved from focussing on musical matters to using the music as a means to place the Gaels on the political agenda. Introducing Gaelic songs to fashionable Edwardian audiences, although somewhat provocative, made her efforts socially acceptable and highly esteemed – and thus more usable for propaganda purposes.

Daughter of well-known Scottish tenor David Kennedy, Marjory grew up in Scotland and London when not travelling with her father; later studying music in Milan and Paris. The Kennedys were ardent Liberals and staunch supporters of Irish Home Rule, and she became interested in politics at an early age. A truly British cosmopolitan, she nevertheless always considered herself primarily a Scot.

Her father wished to bring the songs of Scotland to those in the diaspora and toured widely, thus reinforcing the Scots' separate cultural and national identity within the British Empire. Politically aware, the Kennedys appreciated the egalitarian society in Australia and New Zealand, strongly disapproved of the prevalent unequal social conditions in British India, and explicitly refrained from visiting the West Indies where the democracy 'non est'.

My paper will explore how Mrs Kennedy-Fraser used both Scots and Gaelic songs to reinforce a national identity, how she responded to jingoistic currents during the Great War, and how her œuvre began to sink into oblivion in the socially transformed Britain in the years leading up to World War II.

The antivivisection movement and its relationship to feminism provides a cultural and historical backdrop for H. G. Wells’ science fiction novella, The Island of Doctor Moreau, published in 1896. Wells was a lifelong supporter of the feminist movement, and although he was a member of the Research Defense Society, he remained somewhat sympathetic to the antivivisectionist cause. While Wells never openly objected to vivisection himself, his novella undoubtedly provided the “most terrifying accent” to “the icon of woman and vivisected animal." Critiquing science’s Machiavellian role in the highly industrialized world of modern capitalism, Wells dissects the systematic domination of society’s most vulnerable populations, an obvious concern for the feminists that opposed vivisection, and the “myth of objectivity, distance, disembodiment, and separation from the world of nature” in male-dominated scientific discourse.

Αντικείμενο της παρούσας εργασίας αποτελεί μία από τις πιο ενδιαφέρουσες
περιόδους του γυναικείου κινήματος. Εκείνη της διεκδίκησης της ψήφου στην Αγγλία στο
πέρασμα από τον 19ο στον 20 αιώνα. Η περίοδος της ανάπτυξης της δράσης των σουφραζετών.
Αν και πρόκειται για ένα κίνημα κατά βάση αστικό, η διεκδίκηση της ψήφου αγκάλιασε πλατιές
μάζες γυναικών και αξιοποίησε μορφές πάλης που είχαν την προέλευσή τους στις
επαναστατικές παραδόσεις του λαού της Αγγλίας προκαλώντας την εντονότατη αντίδραση των
αστικών κυβερνητικών κύκλων.
Η προσέγγιση ξεκινάει με μια σύντομη παράθεση των εξελίξεων που καταγράφηκαν στην
Αγγλία πάνω στο ζήτημα της διεύρυνσης της ψήφου καθόλη τη διάρκεια του 19ου αιώνα
προκειμένου να γίνει αντιληπτή η σημασία και ο ρόλος της ψήφου, του βασικότερου αιτήματος
του κινήματος που εξετάζεται. Στη συνέχεια, γίνεται προσπάθεια να εξηγηθεί η βάση πάνω
στην οποία αναπτύχθηκε το κίνημα, το ποια ήταν τα ζητήματα που επιχείρησε να απαντήσει.
Ακολουθεί κωδικοποιημένη παράθεση των σημαντικότερων έργων που επηρέασαν την σκέψη
των υποστηρικτών της γυναικείας ψήφου αλλά και παράθεση των κυριότερων επιχειρημάτων
που αξιοποίησαν με σκοπό να πείσουν και να κινητοποιήσουν για την υλοποίηση του
αιτήματός τους. Η παρουσίαση του θέματος κλείνει με αναφορά στις οργανώσεις που
συγκροτήθηκαν με στόχο την διεκδίκηση της ψήφου και στις μορφές που κατά καιρούς
αξιοποιήθηκαν και υπηρετούσαν τον στόχο αυτό.

Монографію присвячено дослідженню становища та ролі жінок у суспільному і політичному житті Великої Британії від другої половини ХІХ ст. до 1939 р. У роботі, на основі аналізу джерел та історіографічної бази, комплексно досліджено процеси, пов’язані із зародженням та розвитком суфражистського руху як першого масштабного прояву суспільно-політичної активності британського жіноцтва. Висвітлено динаміку змін у становищі жінок на ринку праці, у подружньому житті, освітній та політичній сферах в зазначений період. Акцентується увага на законодавстві, спрямованому на розширення прав жінок у перелічених сферах. Досліджено роль політичної ідеології та системи морально-етичних цінностей у формуванні ставлення суспільства до проблеми гендерного нерівноправ’я. З’ясовано вплив суфражистського та антисуфражистського рухів, участі жінок у Першій світовій війні, а також розширення їхніх прав та можливостей у різних сферах життєдіяльності на зрушення у панівному гендерному укладі. Визначено роль періоду від другої половини ХІХ ст. до 1939 р. у процесі емансипації британських жінок. Видання розраховане на істориків, викладачів, студентів та всіх, хто цікавиться історією.

This book deals with the formation of state surveillance and the emergence of institutionalized political policing in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Little has been written on this early formative period for the British security state, which began in earnest as a response to the Fenian dynamite campaign of the 1880s. Based on newly declassified documents, Solomon weaves together separate narrative threads which converge to paint a complex picture of the institutional innovations and personal rivalries that produced Britain's first national political police. The interactions between high-ranking bureaucrats, policemen and politicians reveal how often conflicting ideas on controlling organized radicalism coalesced into a unified counter-subversive strategy. Stressing the distinctness of the early British model of political policing, the narrative goes past the confines of a scholarly account by using source material to flesh out multidimensional characters, ranging from choleric Home Secretaries to remorseful anarchist double agents embroiled in a high-stakes and often unscrupulous combination of espionage, collusion and betrayal.

‘Stamped all over the King’s Head: Defaced Coins and Women’s Suffrage’, British Numismatic Journal, 86 (2016), pp.238-245.

Using the British Museum's 'Votes for Women' penny as its starting point, this article conducts an analysis of a group of similar coins.  It attempts to answer how they were made, how many were made, their purpose and place in suffragette historiography.

This paper discusses the depiction of women in J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan". It takes Barrie's close relation to his mother and the suffragette movement into consideration and reveals their reflections in "Peter Pan". It argues that Barrie's work shows the bipolarity of  the  status of women in the society of the early 20th century.

This essay seeks to make visible the spatial nature of suffrage activism in Bath. Using feminist spatial mapping techniques and archival source material, I show how women, in search of the vote, deployed the built environment of Bath, England in their daily movements and actions. Diaries, newspaper articles, and material culture show how suffragettes and suffragists used the city's landmark buildings, private homes, city streets, as well as Bath's centre and periphery to produce radical feminist landscapes within Bath's famously conservative streetscapes. Situating these findings in relation to the broader history of women’s spatial knowledge and practices, this essay offers a model for understanding, mapping, and thus making visible women's political activism in a particular place and time.

Democracy has never been more popular. It is successfully practiced today in a myriad of different ways by people across virtually every cultural, religious or socio-economic context. The forty-five essays collected in this companion suggest that the global popularity of democracy derives in part from its breadth and depth in the common history of human civilization. The chapters include exceptional accounts of democracy in ancient Greece and Rome, modern Europe and America, among peoples’ movements and national revolutions, and its triumph since the end of the Cold War. However, this book also includes alternative accounts of democracy’s history: its origins in prehistoric societies and early city-states, under-acknowledged contributions from China, Africa and the Islamic world, its familiarity to various Indigenous Australians and Native Americans, the various challenges it faces today in South America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the latest democratic developments in light of globalization and new technologies, and potential future pathways to a more democratic world. Understanding where democracy comes from, where its greatest successes and most dismal failures lie, is central to democracy’s project of inventing ways to address the need of people everywhere to live in peace, freedom and with a say in the decisions that affect their lives.

(2018; master's capstone) Eva Gore-Booth (b. Co. Sligo, Ireland, 1870; d. London, England, 1926) was a poet and dramatist, part of the Irish literary revival of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Simultaneously, she was a political and social activist, an early intersectional feminist focused on the lot of poor and working-class women in urban England. As a committed pacifist, Gore-Booth took a strong stand against the First World War, articulating Gospel-based non-resistance and championing peace and the rights of conscientious objectors. This capstone argues that the depth and profound integration of her thinking is revealed in her response to armed Irish nationalism in the form of the April, 1916, Easter Rising, in which her sister, Constance Markievicz, was a principal participant. Far from the nationalist, or “provisional” defender of anti-colonial violence, Gore-Booth is sometimes held to be, our analysis of her political, poetic, and theological writings reveals Eva Gore-Booth’s fundamental rejection of nationalism, hierarchy, and political rule in favor of a universalist ethic of love transcending artificial divisions.

The 1870 and 1882 Married Women’s Property Acts’ passage constituted a significant change in married women’s legal status in Britain. The Property Acts granted married women independent property rights, thereby overturning much of the English common law of coverture—the doctrine that a married woman had no legal identity independent of her husband. Married women’s property rights, consequently, introduced a fundamental tension into Britain’s patriarchal social order, long predicated on a married woman’s legal non-existence and economic dependence.

This dissertation argues that the social and legal contradictions the Property Acts engendered compelled Britons to re-imagine their society: from one organized around an independent, property-owning male head of household to one comprised of men and women, married or single, with claims to individual rights. It follows social commentators, judges, feminists, MPs, and government officials who tried to define the Act’s scope via debates in the press, the courts, the halls of Parliament, and offices of Inland Revenue. Recovering these debates reveals two understandings of the Property Acts: for some, a paternalistic law that protected poor women’s property from idle husbands; for feminists, a symbol of a married woman’s independence. Overall, this study marks a transitional moment for British society, as these competing arguments undermined the dominant Victorian-era separate spheres ideology and required Britons re-negotiate husbands and wives’ respective obligations to each other, to society, and to the state.

“Reforming the Married State” deploys a trove of sources—newspapers, periodicals, suffragists’ papers, Parliamentary debates, and government papers—that reframe the Property Acts within histories of gender, liberalism and capitalism. While scholars acknowledge the Property Acts’ passage constituted a significant political victory for the women’s movement, they commonly regard women’s Parliamentary enfranchisement in 1918 as the impetus for subsequent economic and social reforms. As a result, the Property Acts are overlooked in social and economic histories of nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain. Re-centering the Property Acts illustrates the breadth of debate the Property Acts inspired, as legal changes to women’s rights in marriage reverberated through British social and economic life.

Examines the extent and geographical spread of the entry of women into local government leadership (as mayors and alderman) in boroughs in the period 1918-39, with particular focus on the 30+ Liberals. The article analyses the social, economic and political profile of these pioneers and the obstacles that prevented a larger number of women from achieving leadership roles in this period.

This book offers an interdisciplinary, feminist contribution to the architectural and social history of Bath, England. Approaching the world-renowned heritage of Bath with the methods of the architectural historian and the site-specific interventions of the contemporary artist, Hammond looks beyond and behind Bath's strategic marshaling of its past.

As Hammond demonstrates, wealthy patrons, sex workers, symbols of idealized femininity and Edwardian feminist activists all made powerful spatial interventions in Bath's built environment. Yet little of that impact is known, much less recognized in the city's public history. This book presents the ways in which women of all classes shaped the buildings and landscapes of one of England's most architecturally significant cities. But this book is also an intervention into Bath's public memory; in it, the author describes how her site-specific works of art were strategic means to bring her archival findings to a broader public. Through both art and research, an interdisciplinary approach to the city, Hammond aims to transform as well as critique the urban image of Bath. At once a performative literature, an extensively researched history, and a feminist guide to the city, Architects, Angels, Activists engages with current struggles over urban signification in Bath and beyond.

Addressing the lack of research on memory practices in grassroots media texts, this chapter examines mediated memories of the votes for women campaign within a leading British feminist webzine. Focusing on how memories of the militant suffrage campaign are mobilized in connection with parliamentary engagement and direct action, I argue that these highly selective feminist memories perform political work in the present, shaped by feelings of gratitude and pride. Climate change activists in particular are skilfully adopting suffragette memories as part of their campaigning strategy. In this chapter I demonstrate the malleable ways in which contemporary activists appropriate past social movements as a branding and mobilization technique, calling on them as performative memory resources for present day needs.

At its core, feminist rhetorical scholarship is about freedom of expression. However, few scholars of free speech engage questions of gender, and those that do largely limit their focus to the harm expression has had on women, situating women objects of speech instead of speaking subjects. To create a stronger foundation from which free speech scholars may explore issues of gender, this paper seeks to suture together feminist and free speech scholarship by exploring how Emmeline Pankhurst’s speech, “Freedom or Death,” lends unique insight into how suffrage advocates envisioned the vote as voice.

In establishing the Socialist Women‘s International (SWI) within the Second International in 1907, Clara Zetkin sought to bring together delegates from the women’s socialist movement from around Europe and beyond. In the case of Britain, women from the Indepedent Labour Party (ILP), the Women’s Labour League (WLL) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) attended SWI conferences. But, although the SDP was relatively marginal in the British socialist women’s movement (the ILP prepoderated and the WLL represented many millions in the trade union movement), Zetkin’s patronage ensured Dora Montefiore, the leading socialist woman in the SDP, stood out on the international stage as the spokeperson for British socialist women.
Zetkin first came to Montefiore’s attention through her publications in the SDP’s journal, Justice (from 1899), and her initial meeting with Zetkin at the 1907 SWI conference in Stuttgart led to an ideological bond which lasted into the 1920s when both women joined their countries‘ respective Communist Parties. Indeed, Zetkin and Montefiore’s personal bond was so strikingly immediate that in 1909 the latter arranged an official visit to London by Zetkin, hosting Zetkin in her own home and arranging a series of events at which Zetkin was guest of honour. In 1910, when the second SWI conference occurred in Copenhagen, Montefiore was again welcomed by Zetkin, and again spoke on behalf of the British socialist women. Two years later, at the Extraordinary International Socialist Peace Congress in Basel, Montefiore attended as official reporter for the British Daily Herald, marching in the procession between Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg, and writing of Zetkin’s leadership of the women’s contingent in her articles.
The favourtism shown to Montefiore at the 1907 and 1910 SWI conferences led to disputes (both personal and ideological) within the British socialist women’s movement (including an en masse conference walk-out by ILP delegates in 1910) and resulted in the SWI adopting policy with ‘official‘ British endorsement which did not represent the strength of feeling of British socialist women and, indeed, was disregarded by them when campaigning back home. (Such policies included calls for full universal suffrage – as against gradual democratisation in the suffrage – and the refusal of socialist women to collaboarate with ‘bourgeois feminists‘ in joint campaigns.) Indeed, although Montefiore retained Zetkin’s patronage during this period, she was marginalised from 1910 within the British socialist women’s movement precisely because she was seen as misrepresenting the British movement on the international stage!
This paper will discuss the relationship between Zetkin and Montefiore in the context of the latter’s position in the British socialist women’s movement. It will consider the British resistence to Zetkin’s patronage of Montefiore (and the policies which resulted from it at the SWI conferences) and discuss the coup which saw international socialist influence wrestled from Montefiore by socialist women in the ILP and WLL (two organisations with common ideological foundations). Ultimately, Montefiore became a noted socialist woman on the international stage whilst simultaneously losing her political voice in the British domestic movement – an ironic turn of events created largely by the distorting factor of Montefiore’s personal relationship with the SWI’s leader, Clara Zetkin.

This book tells the history of Cambridge from the earliest Roman and Anglo Saxon inhabitants through to the notorious Cambridge Spies, who actively spied for the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Told in an accessible manner, and illustrated throughout, the contents are:
1. Etheldreda: Born a Princess, Died a Saint
2. Vanquished by the Vikings: the sacking of Cambridge
3. Fire, Death and Murder at the Fairs: Stourbridge and Midsummer Fairs
4. Jousting Tournaments: history of jousts at Cambridge
5. The Black Death: death in Cambridge
6. Peasants' Revolt: attacks on Cambridge colleges during the revolt
7. Bloody Mary's Revenge on Cambridge
8. Burnt at the Stake: John Hullier, the Protestant Martyr
9. Bear-Baiting: cruel sport in Cambridge
10. Witches and Witchcraft: women killed for being witches
11. Bull-Baiting: more cruel Cambridge sports
12. The English Civil War: the fortification of Cambridge
13. Oliver Cromwell's Missing Head
14. Pressed for an Answer: Peine Forte et Dure
15. One in the Eye for Sir Isaac Newton
16. Highway Robbery: highway men in Cambridge
17. Branding: punishment for crimes
18. Bloody Burwell Fire: the death of 70 innocent people
19. Dick Turpin: his time hiding in Cambridge
20. Cockfighting: history of cockfighting at Cambridge
21. The Resurrection of Tristram Shandy - death of Laurence Stearne: grave robbers steal his body for dissection in the university
22. Cambridge Gallows: the tragedy of those hung at Cambridge
23. The Tragical Death of the Revd Samuel Reeve
24. The Chimneysweep Burglars: thefts from colleges
25. Elizabeth Woodcock and the Curse of the Three Tuns Inn
26. General Tom Thumb Causes a Riot
27. Sister Act: The Cambridge Arsenic Poisoners
28. The Three Tuns Inn: Den of Thieves
29. Burned Alive
30. Bloody Students: The Battle of Town and Gown
31. Fatal Bumps: death on the river Cam
32. Suffragette's Protest
33. The Great War: the role the university played in WWI
34. The Judases Who Betrayed from Within: the story of the Cambridge spies: Blunt, Burgess, Philby, MacLean, and others
35. The Enigma of the Second World War: the role Cambridge played in cracking the German enigma codes at Bletchley Park

Also attached are reviews of the book in the Cambridge News by Emma Higginbotham and a piece about Oliver Cromwell's Head, taken from the book.

Based on case studies of four European countries, the chapter offers an overview of the disputes and controversies between the women who were fighting for female suffrage and those who opposed equal rights. The main focus is on the female opponents or anti-suffragists who, despite their large numbers of supporters, have been mostly marginalized in the historiography on female enfranchisement. The time-setting of the case studies ranges from the late 19 th and early 20 th century suffrage debates in Britain and Italy up to the second half of the 20 th century when the issue was controversially debated in Switzerland. The essay deals with the female anti-suffragists' ambivalence towards women's role in society and their definition of "natural" gender roles, which they saw as the primary hindrance to political equality. A different case study of anti-suffragism can be seen in the debates around the 1931 introduction of female suffrage during Spain's Second Republic. Fearing a shift to the right due to women's lack of political education and the influence of the Catholic Church on female voters, even advocates of women's rights argued against female suffrage. The author analyses the motivations behind the women who fought against their own enfranchisement, highlighting the differences as well as the similarities between all the arguments made by female anti-suffragists, which were ultimately rooted in a deep distrust of women's capacity to act as rationally as men.

This article traces the ways in which the British suffragette Emily Wilding Davison was represented in national newspapers between 1913 - the year she died - and 2013, the centenary of her death. We identify three key discourses through which Davison has been represented in four British newspapers throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first: delegitimisation, recuperation and trivialisation. In doing so, this paper provides original insights into the ways that the fight for women’s rights has been figured in different historical moments. A key argument is that over time, Davison’s militant actions – once cast as those of a hysterical lunatic - have slowly come to be recuperated and legitimised as part of the story of British democracy. However, this discursive shift cannot be straightforwardly celebrated as a progressive move in representations of women’s movements, as Davison is frequently invoked to delegitimise contemporary feminism. Our analysis charts the extent to which Davison has been visible (or not) in newspapers through different historical periods; the specific ways in which Davison’s image was transformed along with broader changes in women’s status; and it considers the political implications of these (in)visibilities and representations for contemporary feminism.

The Great War was widely seen in Britain as a struggle for civilian and constitutional standards of government against the evils of ‘Prussian militarism’. Yet the British political class itself was by no means a purely ‘civilian’ caste. During the war 264 MPs—some 40 per cent of the membership of the House of Commons—volunteered to serve in the armed forces. These men occupied a unique and controversial position both within Parliament and in the forces. A shared experience of military service could provide a common identity, and even a basis for common action, for MPs from rival parties, and many of these men came to support an apparently ‘military’ agenda at Westminster. At the same time, fighting MPs could act as agents of parliamentary oversight and control over the military establishment. Yet the importance of these ‘Service Members’ was not only evident in the realm of civil–military relations, and this article explores the significance and consequences of attempts by Service Members to claim a special political authority as the ‘representatives’ of the armed forces in the House of Commons, to offer an important new perspective on wartime British debates about the workings of representative politics, the nature of political citizenship, and the authority of Parliament as an institution.

In her biographical compilation English Female Artists (1876), Ellen Clayton documented the lives of many talented and hard-working women as a means of bringing to light and celebrating their role in the history of art. Moreover, she also explored these artists' biographies in order to problematize more general issues, thus entering into one of the most significant initiatives of the period: the movement for women's rights, with proposals including the improvement of women's education, their access to art academies, and the amelioration of laws regarding marriage, family and employment. Of particular interest are the lives of celebrated artists who were also leading activists in the period, such as Laura Herford, Eliza Bridell-Fox and Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Therefore, this study aims to explore not only Clayton's approach to female artists within the specific domain of art, but also the incursions that they made into broad social and political issues regarding women. Finally, the presence in various biographies of the term "sisters" is particularly revealing in that Clayton, through her text, could be said to be assembling as many women as possible, not just artists, as a means of fighting for their rights together as sisters. En su compilación biográfica sobre mujeres artistas English Female Artists (1876), Ellen Clayton documentó las vidas de numerosas mujeres talentosas y muy trabajadoras para reivindicar su participación en la historia del arte. Además, también aprovechó las biografías de estas artistas para abordar temas más generales, adhiriéndose así a una de las iniciativas más relevantes del período: el movimiento por los derechos de las mujeres, con propuestas que incluyen el progreso en la educación de las mujeres, su acceso a las academias de arte y la mejora de leyes sobre el matrimonio, la familia y el empleo. En particular, cabe reseñar las biografías de artistas célebres que también fueron activistas destacadas de la época, como Laura Herford, Eliza Bridell-Fox y Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Así, este estudio tiene como objetivo explorar no solo cómo enfoca Clayton el análisis de la artista en su propio ámbito específico, sino también las incursiones de la autora en temas sociales y políticos más generales relacionados con las mujeres. Finalmente, la presencia en varias biografías de un término significativo, "hermanas", es particularmente revelador, ya que Clayton podría estar intentando reunir a través de este texto a la mayor cantidad posible de mujeres, no solo artistas, para luchar todas juntas como hermanas por sus derechos. Ellen Clayton; English Female Artists; women artists; women's rights movement; Victorian period Ellen Clayton; English Female Artists; mujeres artistas; movimiento por los derechos de las mujeres; época victoriana Palabras clave: Abstract Resumen

Nel 1916 un gruppo di donne scozzesi, incitate dalla Dott.ssa Elsie Inglis, profonde tutte le proprie energie per dar vita a un ospedale con sole donne, ad eccezione di tre autisti imposti dalle autorità francesi. La loro storia s'inscrive nella rivendicazione delle donne per la parità, solo che a differenza delle colleghe inglesi, guidate da Emmeline Pankhurst, che, nel 1903, fonda l'Unione sociale e politica delle donne (Women's Social and Political Union-WSPU), con il preciso intento di far ottenere alle donne il diritto di voto politico, concesso solo agli uomini tranne che per le elezioni ai consigli municipali e per le elezioni di contea. Le suffragette inglesi decidono di attuare delle azioni dimostrative finalizzate ad attirate l'attenzione pubblica. Anche se ottengono l'effetto contrario, meritando il titolo di pazze o scriteriate. Il gruppo scozzese opta per dimostrare l'uguaglianza delle donne nel silenzio e aiutando gli uomini, costringendoli a ricredersi a considerarli capaci come il sesso forte. Questo principio anima tutto il gruppo, anche nei momenti di maggiore difficoltà e di stress. Premessa A 30 miglia da Parigi, sorge l'Abbazia di Royaumont, una delle più belle abbazie cistercensi della Francia, divenuta, nel 1914, testimone silenziosa della resistenza francese dinanzi all'offensiva tedesca, da un lato, e, dall'altro, il primo ospedale, in terra francese, gestito, completamente, da donne scozzesi. Questa storia dimenticata, ma importante a mio parere, sia per la quantità di feriti che vi vennero curati, ma soprattutto, per le donne che dimostrarono, per la prima volta, al mondo maschilista che erano in grado di poter svolgere, in tutto e per tutto, lavori delicati e importanti, come quello del personale di sanità, in totale autonomia.

Hibernia was a briefing paper, intended for a dramatic production which did not proceed past the initial exploratory phase. This is NOT an academic paper and does not reflect academic rigours, referencing or argumentation standards. All citation of this work is undertaken at the user’s own risk.

The work was to centre on female characters directly involved or unintentionally caught up in the Easter Rising of 1916. This does not represent what the finished dramatic work would have been (or might yet be depending on time and/or budgetary constraints), yet it should provide the reader with a
greater understanding of the social and societal complexities at work during the Rising and larger the Anglo-Irish War (1913-1923).

The era which the Rising took place in (late Edwardian) results in difficulties for women to play full unfettered role in the rebellion in particular, their roles in nationalism having already been defined and allocated. Even in Irish Citizen Army, class and status played a role. Cumann na mBan was an auxiliary to the Volunteers, but never equal, especially in the eyes of the men themselves.

Abstract

This article examines the attitudes towards femininity expressed by the WSPU speakers at the 1907 Aberdeen by-election and the response these attitudes elicited from Aberdonians. Although the evidence suggests that a majority of the local population accepted the WSPU's demand for votes (for tax-paying women only) on the grounds of equality, the WSPU felt a need to emphasize the expediency of its proposal. In order to argue that such an extension of the franchise would benefit all women WSPU speakers emphasized the priority of sex over all other social divisions but deliberately accepted the specific differences assumed in popular concepts of ‘femininity’ rather than drawing attention to the male ideology and social institutions in which such definitions originated. Some of the imputed feminine attributes which led Aberdeen men and women of all classes to accept the popular stereotype of domestic woman are examined, as are the difficulties the WSPU encountered because its campaigning activities clashed with its own concept of woman, a difficulty shared by other women's association in Aberdeen.




Copyright © 1982 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

British women are by far the most ubiquitous foreign women in recent Serbian history. Consequently, their story was often told, their travelogues that often cast a positive light on Serb and Serbia translated and re-published, and their humanitarian and unique military contributions celebrated. As British women are remarkable for often displaying different of alternative views from their male counterparts this article examines these specificities by illuminating some common motivations and trajectories that characterised these women and thier experiences with Serbs and Serbia. Moreover, it examines how much the tow sides knew and understood each other and what this relationship brought forward. Its time span stretches from the first contact until the Second World War before the relationship patterns changed and became much more complex.

From 1904 to 1914, the British debate on women's suffrage was at its height. Suffragism has been the subject of numerous studies, however, few have paid attention to its opponent, "antisuffragism". This article focuses on antisuffragists' speeches, pamphlets and books to examine their uses of "democracy" and grasp the conceptual struggles at play. Most "Antis" painted women's suffrage as a step towards a degenerate democratic society. However, more surprisingly, some also mobilised the democratic vocabulary positively, as a reason to disallow women the vote. Several authors considered that "democracy" rested on the capacity of the majority to impose its decisions through physical force-thus rendering a government elected by women impotent. Politicians also opposed granting women suffrage on a censorial basis since it went against the "democratic spirit of the time". These findings demonstrate the increased importance of "democracy" in Britain and how a "conservative subversion" of the concept was attempted.

Extended deadline:

                                        Papers are welcome on:

women's suffrage drama and its appropriation of historical figures and periods (including the Medieval);
the work of Edith Craig, Christopher St John, the Pioneer Players;
early twentieth-century plays about prostitution/religion/abjection/imprisonment.

When The Admirable Crichton, a play in four acts by J.M. Barrie, was first produced in 1902, England’s horizon was endless. Tropical climes and questions of social Darwinism would have been buzzing in the ballrooms, as it certainly was in the theatre. "The Admirable Crichton" creates a forum for discussing Society through the reversal of Crichton’s caste as a butler with his paramour Lady Mary’s caste as a lady according to the system of British peerage. It also allows for a discussion of gender roles and expectations, as well as providing entertainment and maintaining a safe comedic distance from reality. Though Crichton is no longer the butler and Lord Loam is no longer a lord, the hierarchy on the deserted island remains the same. For the purpose of this discussion, a lens is focused on both the British Island and Crichton’s island, the lack of change in the women’s circumstances, and the way in which women are oppressed based on the mere happenstance of gender.

Edith Garrud, maître de Ju-Jitsu de Londres à l’époque victorienne théorisait l’idée que la seule inégalité qui n’ait pas encore été surmontée entre hommes et femmes était la force physique. Elle prédisait une prochaine amélioration par l’évolution, et préconisait en attendant la pratique des arts martiaux. A partir de cet exemple de dialectique corps/domination par celle qui formait les gardes du corps de la suffragette Emeline Pankhurst, on tentera de questionner une amorce de « dé-naturalisation » de l’oppression des femmes, des questions de genre et d’espèce au tournant XIXe-XXe siècle, près d’un siècle avant les théories critiques et genrées de la biologie (Haraway, Fausto-Sterling).

This article connects J. S. Mill’s political theory and practice with the contemporary debate on representative constructivism and argues that Mill’s advocacy of female suffrage affords an empirical example of the mobilization power of representative constructivism. By doing so, it challenges the interpretation that Mill’s theory of representation was solely descriptive. Based on the works of Frank Ankersmit, Hanna Pitkin, and Stuart Hall, I claim in section two that three basic assumptions form the crux of descriptivism: (i) representation is bereft of creative power; (ii) representative democracy is a second-best system for direct democracy; (iii) the object to be represented is formed before representation takes place. Then, in section three, I show how each of these assumptions is challenged by constructivism, the main features of which are clarified with the help of contemporary political theorists such as Ernesto Laclau. Next, in section four, Mill’s democratic theory is scrutinized in order to substantiate the thesis that he subscribed to representative constructivism. It is argued that Mill’s endorsement of constructivism is connected with his conception of representation as advocacy and his encomium on compromise. Section five shows that Mill espoused constructivism not only in theory, but also in practice. Indeed, Mill’s advocacy of female suffrage in the House of Commons in 1866 epitomizes the mobilization power of representative constructivism. Studying this concrete example of constructivism alongside Mill’s theory of political representation clarifies that constructivism is democratic to the extent it seeks to make citizens themselves appropriate and contest the claims that their representatives construct on their behalf.