Suffrage Discourse In Britain During The First World War

by Smith,Angela K.

• ISBN13: 9780754639510
• ISBN10: 0754639517
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2016-04-07
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In the first in-depth study of the relationship between the suffrage campaign in Britain and World War I, Angela K. Smith explores the links between these two defining moments of the early twentieth century. Did the opportunities afforded by the war enable women finally and irrefutably to demonstrate their right to full citizenship? Or did World War I actually postpone women's enfranchisement? Although the Suffrage Movement was divided by the outbreak of war, many women continued to campaign for the vote, producing a wide variety of fictional and nonfictional 'suffrage texts'. Whether the writing of these women demonstrated their patriotism, pacifism, or ambivalence, it formed an integral part of their political responses to the war. Through textual/literary analysis, Smith explores these responses within historical, social, and cultural contexts to understand the impact of the war on the success of the campaign in 1918 and the consequences for the years that followed.

Author Biography

Angela K. Smith is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Plymouth.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations	vi
Acknowledgements	vii
1. Writing Suffrage Before 1914	1	(20)
2. Patriotic Suffragism: Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst and the WSPU	21	(16)
3. A Different View: Sylvia Pankhurst and the East End	37	(14)
4. The Pacifist Voice	51	(20)
5. Suffragists and War Work	71	(22)
6. 'That Silly Suffrage': The Paradox of the First World War	93	(16)
7. 'The Empowering of Individuals': Feminism, Art and War in The Egoist	109	(22)
8. Winning the Peace	131	(12)
Bibliography	143	(6)
Index	149