The Suffragette: The History of the Women's Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905-1910Pankhurst, E. Sylvia (Estelle Sylvia)
History
The Suffragette: The History of the Women's Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905-1910
Pankhurst, E. Sylvia (Estelle Sylvia)
Women -- Suffrage -- Great Britain
Shall I speak of her logic? It is inexorable. It is not on mere smart
retort that she depends when heckled--she has a good case and relies
on it. She is saturated with facts, and the hecklers find themselves
heckled, twitted, tripped, floored. I think they like it. She does,
and shows it. She flings herself into the fray, and literally pants
for the next question to tear to shreds. Her questioners are for the
most part earthenware, and this bit of porcelain does them in the eye,
quaintly, daintily, intellectually, glibly.
Look to it, Mr. Gautrey, or the witchery of Christabel will "do you in
the eye."
No, the electors of Peckham agreed, these Suffragettes were not the
sort of women they had read of. They were neither the "disorderly,"
"shouting," "abusive," "unsexed," "violent" creatures, nor the
"soured," "dry," and "disappointed" women they had been led to expect.
It was not merely the "enthusiast" in the _Daily Mail_ who testified
to the work that the Suffragettes were doing. Conservative newspapers,
though they generally preferred to ignore the Suffragettes because,
though opposing the Government, they were not supporting either the
Conservative candidates or their proposals, nevertheless they allowed
some of the truths that the special correspondent told them about the
women's campaign to filter into their columns.
The _Standard_ said: "These women are prepared to kill themselves with
fatigue and exposure, not for the vote but for what the vote means."
The _By-Stander_ said: "The ladies' tongues have been tireless and
their brains inexhaustible. Of all the assembled bodies, and their
name was legion, who thronged Peckham, theirs has been the most
persistent." The _Pall Mall Gazette_ said: "Everybody seems agreed
that the best speeches in the election are being made by the lady
Suffragists," whilst the _Daily Mail_ asserted that "in no contest have
the Suffragettes figured so largely or done such harm to the Radical
candidate."
There is a type of man who will sometimes ask a woman's advice about
politics and may even admit that she is not only a better speaker than
he is but knows more about public questions than he will ever know, and
who yet thinks it quite tolerable that she should be forever debarred
from voting, though he has had that privilege since he was twenty-one.
Men of this type are usually great followers of Party, and allow their
ideas of right and wrong in politics to be almost entirely dictated
by the actions of the very fallible gentlemen who happen to be their
Party leaders. Liberals of this type, whether editors of newspapers,
journalists, Members of Parliament, or merely rank and file, had always
condemned the Suffragettes because the Liberal party happened to be
attacked by them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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