A Mad, Wicked Folly (35 page)

Edwardian women were making their voices heard
through the suffrage movement, and young women were
finding employment, becoming better educated, and even
becoming doctors and lawyers, although many universities did not award degrees and many associations, such
as the Bar Council in England, denied females the right
to practice. Middle-class girls were rebelling against their
parents and demanding treatment equal to that of boys.
Upper-middle class and aristocratic girls clung to tradition more than middle–class girls, but they too wanted
the freedom to be more independent. Working-class single women were the most vulnerable without suffrage. The
government turned a blind eye to their lives, which, if they
worked outside the home, usually included sweated labor
(sweatshop labor, as we know it in the United States) or
long hours and no private life as a live-in servant. A great
many working-class women were not paid a living wage
and were forced to live in squalid conditions.

Vicky’s arranged betrothal was very common for the
time. People rarely married purely for love; a good match
equaled marrying someone within your own class or someone who could further the interests and contribute to the
betterment of the family. Vicky, as an upper middle-class
girl, would have been forbidden to date someone like Will,
who was working-class.

The elaborate and beautiful clothing worn during the
Edwardian era was the privilege of those who could afford
it, in other words the upper classes (the upper-middle class
and the aristocracy). The fashion was vastly different from
that of any other class. Women’s fashions were all about
the curves and required a corset, in particular the S-bend
corset, which produced tiny “wasp” waists. Women often
“tightlaced” their corsets: pulling them so taut that they
could barely breathe. Dresses were tight-fitting around the
waist and bottom, and often ended in a long swath of material at the hem. Later in the era, during Vicky’s time, skirts
became much narrower, with slight trains, and the silhouette was longer and slimmer requiring a new kind of corset
called the S-bend, which ended mid-thigh instead of at the
hips. The S-bend was touted as a health corset because
it put less strain on the stomach. However, because the
corset pushed the torso forward, it caused a new health
problem: backache. Women would use parasols or walking
sticks to help take the strain off the back. Hats were huge—
often twenty-four inches in circumference—trimmed with
feathers and ribbons and secured through the hair with a
long, decorative hatpin.

Vicky’s tailor-made was very much in fashion around
the turn of the twentieth century. It was essentially a man’s
suit combined with a long skirt. It was very comfortable
and informal, and represented the changing nature of the
Edwardian woman.

The penny dreadful and the tuppenny novelette were the
graphic novels of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. These
publications were made very cheaply so that the young
working-class would be able to afford them. The booklets
contained serialized stories released over time. They were
usually thrillers. Early stories included Black Bess, or the
Knight of the Road, Varney the Vampire, and The String of
Pearls: A Romance (introducing Sweeney Todd). A popular
Edwardian serial about a fictional detective called Sexton
Blake, which first appeared in 1893, was published up until
the 1970s.

The reason why women were not given the right to vote
seems ridiculous viewed through our twenty-first-century
eyes. Many men thought women too irrational to make
important decisions. They feared women would become
the majority voters and use emotional arguments to change
policies, particularly on moral and sexual issues, imposing higher standards. It was also felt that women would
lose their charm, and men their dominance over women.
Women were allowed to vote in municipal elections, and
it was thought that this was sufficient, because local government dealt with social issues, which were deemed
women’s concerns. The National Government dealt with
wider issues, such as defense of the realm, something that
was not a woman’s concern.

Many women also opposed suffrage. An anti-suffrage
group—largely formed of women—called The National
League for Opposing Woman Suffrage was formed to put
their case forward. These women believed firmly that
a man was better equipped to make decisions, and that
women had enough to do running the household. They
believed women could influence their husbands to make
the right voting decision. Queen Victoria was appalled at
the idea of women’s suffrage, and in 1870 urged her subjects to “check this mad, wicked folly of women’s rights.”

In the United States, there were many women in the
Temperance movement and it was feared that women
would be able to bring about Prohibition. This was proven
to be false as Prohibition came in before women received
the right to vote.

British suffragettes did indeed chain themselves to
railings, heckle political meetings, throw rocks and tiles at
cars, and smash windows. It’s unclear whether their militant tactics had any weight in the final decision to give
women the vote. Instead, it is thought that women’s part
in winning World War I (1914–1918) actually turned the
tables in their favor. Because they successfully took on
roles that men had to abandon to become soldiers, they
were no longer seen as “half angels, half idiots,” as the
famed pro-suffrage politician Keir Hardie put it.

British women began demanding the vote in 1865, and
were finally granted it in 1918 for those over thirty years of
age. In 1928, women were granted the same voting rights
as men, which was over the age of twenty-one.
What’s the difference between suffragettes and suffragists? In 1906, the journalist Charles E. Hands of the
Daily Mail
, a British newspaper known for its conservative views, called the WSPU
suffragettes
, meaning it to be
a slur. The WSPU embraced the name and responded that
they were actually suffra
gets
, because they were going
to
get
the vote. Groups other than the WSPU were simply
called suffragists. The definition of suffragist is someone,
male or female, who advocates for extending voting rights
(also known as suffrage). Today the word suffragette is
widely used as a blanket term to reference any woman in
the nineteenth and twentieth century who fought for the
right to vote.

In the United States, the fight was just as strong,
although suffragists weren’t as militant as those in the
Great Britain. Their demand for the vote began in 1848.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Susan
B. Anthony, Lucy Burns, and Alice Paul were some of the
stalwart warriors fighting for women’s right to vote. Alice
Paul and Lucy Burns attended school in England and joined
the WSPU (Paul in 1908, Burns in 1909). Paul was forcefed in England in 1909 after hunger-striking. As noted in
the story, Paul was arrested after gate-crashing the Lord
Mayor’s Banquet. The character of Lucy Hawkins is based
on these two women.

Wyoming became the first state to grant women’s
suffrage in 1869. In 1920 Woodrow Wilson signed the
Nineteenth Amendment, which prohibits state and federal
agencies from gender-based voting discrimination.

We modern women are fortunate to have had such
brave souls fighting to give us the vote. It’s a gift to treasure,
certainly never one to ignore. The spirits of the Pankhursts,
Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and hundreds of others
who sacrificed their peaceful existence for women in the
future must always follow us into the voting booth.

In 1878, Emmeline Goulden (1858–1928) married Richard
Pankhurst, a lawyer who was passionate about women’s
suffrage. They had five children: Christabel, Sylvia, Frank
(who died in infancy), Harry, and Adela, who was also
involved in the movement, but largely in the north. Adela
was banished to Australia in 1914 by her mother and sister
Christabel after they falsely accused her of being useless
to the suffrage movement.

Emmeline cofounded the Women’s Social and Political
Union with Christabel. She was very stalwart about women’s suffrage, and often sacrificed her children’s happiness
for the movement. During World War I, Emmeline put
aside the suffrage demand temporarily to help with the
war effort. She encouraged women to chastise men for not
going to war by presenting them with a white feather, which
was a symbol of cowardice. Two years after her death, a
statue of her was erected in Victoria Tower Gardens, next
to Parliament. It stands there today.

Christabel Harriette Pankhurst (1880–1958) was
cofounder of the WSPU. She was very beautiful, feminine, and charismatic. She received a law degree from
Manchester University, but was unable to practice law
because she was a woman. The Bar Council in England
drew up its own regulations, which excluded women
from practicing until 1919, when the Sex Disqualification
(Removal) Act made it illegal to disqualify a person from
a post, public function, civil or judicial office, vocation,
or incorporated society on basis of sex or marriage.
Christabel was a talented orator, and hundreds of women
admired her and would do anything for her. She was,
like her mother, very autocratic, and dismissive of anyone who took a view other than her own. She and her
mother highly approved of militant action, but Christabel
preferred to direct operations, and was only jailed three
times, the last in 1909.

Christabel fled to Paris to escape prison in 1912, and
directed WSPU actions from there. She returned to England
in 1913 at the start of World War I. She was arrested, but
served only thirty days of her three-year sentence. She
moved to the United States in 1921 and died in Los Angeles
at the age of seventy-seven.

Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst (1882–1960) was a talented
artist, pacifist, and an active member of the WSPU. Her
civil disobedience caused her to endure multiple imprisonments that included sleep, thirst, and hunger strikes—the
latter of which resulted in many force-feedings. Her beautiful artwork was featured heavily in WSPU publicity. The
panels she created for the Women’s Exhibition in 1909 were
later destroyed by police when they raided WSPU headquarters. In 1914 Sylvia began to disagree with the WSPU’s
tactics (such as arson and destroying priceless works of art)
and political decisions. Wanting to help improve the lives
of working-class and impoverished woman, Sylvia turned
her attentions to the East End Federation of the WSPU and
founded the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS).
Christabel and Emmeline, angered by Sylvia’s association
with this group, gave her an ultimatum. If she did not leave
the ELFS, then they had no use for her, which seems horrible considering the sacrifices she made for the WSPU. A
staunch feminist, Sylvia refused to marry, and lived with
her partner, Italian revolutionary Silvo Corio, for thirty
years (they had a son, Richard, in 1927). Emmeline, scandalized about Sylvia’s live-in lover, never spoke to her
again. From 1936 until her death, Sylvia fought against fascism in Italian-occupied Ethiopia. She died in 1960, and is
buried in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Henry Francis “Harry” Pankhurst (1889–1910) was the
only son of Emmeline and Richard to reach adulthood.
Harry was a fragile boy and often very sickly. His mother
forced him into masculine jobs, such as bricklayer and
farmhand, in order to toughen him up. Harry tried to join
in with the WSPU, and chalked pavements and spoke at
street corners. Harry contracted polio and died in January
of 1910.

The ghastly practice of force-feeding continued until 1913,
and was a widespread method of trying to prevent women
from protesting through hunger strike. Because the newspapers and public became outraged at this treatment of
women, it became an effective way of protesting for the
suffragettes. Sylvia Pankhurst was arrested fifteen times
in the years between 1913 and 1921 and went on hunger,
sleep, and thirst strikes, resulting in her being force-fed
more than any other British suffragette.

The poster that Vicky fly-posted is based on a real
one that was drawn by Alfred Pearse (1865–1933) for the
WSPU’s propaganda drive in 1910. Pearse called himself
“A Patriot,” and his poster was indeed fly-posted and sold
as a postcard in order to show the public what the current
government was capable of. The illustration was labeled
The Modern Inquisition
.

The Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-health) Act
of 1913 allowed prison officials to release hunger-striking
prisoners until they were well enough to be rearrested
to complete their sentences. This was enacted in order to
sidestep force-feeding. The act was nicknamed the Cat and
Mouse Act (so called to reflect a cat’s habit of releasing its
prey to recover slightly before attacking it again). It was
ineffective because the women would simply disappear,
hidden by suffrage sympathizers, and the police were not
able to rearrest many of them.

In the United States, a group of suffragists, including
Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, were force-fed in 1917 at the
Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed in 1848 by
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and John
Everett Millais. They created their own art movement by
rejecting the art of the day and putting forward their own
ideals of embracing the vivid colors, subjects, and style of
fifteenth-century Italian and Flemish artists. In addition,
the Brotherhood studied nature, and made sure their ideas
stemmed from passionate and genuine thought. Beata
Beatrix (1864–1870), one of Rossetti’s most famous works, is
an homage to his late wife and fellow artist, Lizzie Siddal,
who died from a laudanum overdose.