Justifying Their Modern Sisters: History Writing and the British Suffrage Movement

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Justifying Their Modern Sisters: History Writing and the British Suffrage Movement Maria DiCenzo On the 25* there was a leading article in "The Nation" which makes one well-nigh despair of the intelligence of its author. Anyone so ignorant of the true history of the Suffrage movement might, one would mink, have had the modesty to refrain from commenting on it. The writer alludes to this "fiveyear -old agitation for securing the Padiamentary vote to some women." Has he, then, never heard of the great agitation started byJohn Stuart Mill, worked for by devoted men and women like Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy, Lydia Becker,Jacob Bright, and others; of the petitions, one of them signed by over a quarter of a million; of the innumerable Bills and resolutions! ("How History is Written" 309) The remainder of this article, which expresses "grievous resentfmentj" on the part of members of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies at such a "monstrous misrepresentation" which can only do "insidious, poisonous work," helps to clarify that it is the Women's Social and Political Union to which this uninformed commentator has referred and mistaken for the "general body of women Suffragists." Out of context, this brief front-page tirade on "history" might escape notice, but its importance lies in the fact that it signals the increasingly fraught relationship between suffrage organizations in the Edwardian period and the extent to which the history of "the movement" came to represent competitive ground as they worked to legitimate their demands and tactics, in the interests of solidifying and expanding support for the cause. In a roughly ten-year period between 1902 and 1912 there was a proliferation 40volume 31 number 1 Medea at the Fin de Siècle of full-length histories by women claiming to trace the feminist movement, women's suffrage, and more specifically, the militant suffrage movement1 Given the hostility to women's activism in these years, it is clear that these narratives of "women's history" constituted an oppositional discourse — challenging the status quo — but they were not informed by a singular approach. An analysis of the discourse in the context of other types of publications, such as the official organs produced by various leagues, reveals that these narratives were instrumental in constructing different feminist/activist identities which reflected, in turn, the organizational cultures in th