Suffragette

April 20, 2015
Writing on the eve of the Great War, Pankhurst (1858–1928), the controversial leader of the Women’s Social and Political Union, recounts the previous decade’s rallies, window-breaking, arson, prison mutinies, and hunger strikes intended to incite the men of England’s parliament to act on their longstanding overtures to women’s suffrage. Born to abolitionists in Victorian Manchester, the author married the suffragist Richard Marsden Pankhurst, raised daughters who joined the cause, and served as a local administrator of Suffrage Society. “Deeds, not words” became the motto of the WSPU, who heckled MPs of the ruling Liberal government and campaigned against them; having “exhausted argument” with no vote to show for it, they used incrementally violent tactics aimed squarely at what Pankhurst perceptively understood as government’s sacred keeping: property. The suffragists burned golf greens, set fire to unoccupied country houses, and interrupted the mail. For this they earned the ire of the government, stirring debates on the effectiveness of their militancy and the merits of Pankhurst’s admittedly “autocratic” leadership that continue to this day. Pankhurst’s mannered English occasionally amuses the contemporary ear, and American readers may not fully understand the parliamentary machinations that so riled her, but the shrieks of force-fed suffragist prisoners resonate all too clearly, and Pankhurst’s political justification of property damage feels current.