Photograph: Getty Images Find your voice, and use it A century after Davison's funeral programme declared "She died for women," what can today's feminists learn from the suffragettes?Įmily Davison is fatally injured as she tries to stop the King's horse on Derby Day.
Campaigners worldwide fight for equal political representation, an end to women's poverty, freedom from sexual violence, control over our own bodies, and – ultimately – for that most basic, yet radical, demand: for women to be treated as human beings. A hundred years later, votes for women are long since won in most countries – though not all – and the feminist revolution continues.
In a movement defined by acts of daring, Davison's bravery was extraordinary. She and the other women continued to be force-fed, regularly and brutally. This led to two cracked vertebrae, and a thwack to the head, but the authorities were unmoved. Davison threw herself over a balcony, was caught by some netting, then immediately tried again, launching herself down an iron staircase. In 1912, when she and a large number of other suffragettes were imprisoned in Holloway, there was what Davison referred to as a siege – the doors of women's cells were broken down by guards – and she determined that one big tragedy might save her sisters. As Fran Abrams writes in her book Freedom's Cause, Davison had been imprisoned repeatedly for her suffrage work, had gone on hunger strike and been force fed numerous times. But there's no doubt she was prepared to make dangerous sacrifices for women's rights. The return train ticket she was carrying, for instance, offered as evidence that she didn't mean to die. Joyce Marlow's anthology is lively, comprehensive, surprising and triumphant.There has always been speculation about Davison's intentions. These women were clever and determined, knew the power of humour and surprise and exhibited 'unladylike' passion and bravery. Some of the people and events are well-known, but Marlow has gone beyond the obvious, particularly beyond London, to show us the ordinary women - middle and working-class, who had the breathtaking courage to stand up and be counted - or just as likely hectored, or pelted with eggs. Drawing on extracts from diaries, newspapers, letters, journals and books, Joyce Marlow has pieced together this inspiring, poignant and exciting history using the voices of the women themselves.
It was a bloody and dangerous war lasting several decades, won finally by sheer will and determination in 1928. Click here to purchase from Rakuten Kobo Queen Victoria is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad wicked folly of women's rights, with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor sex is bent' - 1870
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