Each writer has used historical fiction in a way that undermines the control of women’s reading. They have produced work that, while ostensibly is safe because it is ‘women’s fiction’, questions women’s place in history. Historical novels have had a mixed reception, not all of it respectful. Again, such a reputation has added to the advantages a feminist writer can enjoy in her writing history. Each writer has written her history inspired by women’s role, actions, feelings and aspirations.
Tag: suffrage
‘As a Woman I have no Country …’
Why it is that US First Ladies are held in such reverance and high esteem, with a prominance not extended, generally, to ‘political wives’ in other countries – Britain, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, France, Germany, the USSR (as it was) was not addressed by the presentations, yet it remains an issue for historical and cultural exploration and analysis.
A Lasting Literary Collaboration – Beyond the Grave
Ross might have been surprised had she known that after her death Somerville would go on to publish another seventeen books as collaborations between them. Six months dead, it seems, Ross sent a message through a medium to her partner: “You and I have not finished our work. Dear, we shall.” Later attempts to get her to manifest herself at spiritualist seances proved unsuccessful or inconclusive, yet she apparently collaborated willingly, even on the stories in Stray-aways, 1920, many of which involve spiritualism and the occult.
Bristol Suffragette Project
The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded by Mrs Pankhurst in Manchester in 1903 with the aim of winning votes for women, became a national movement which gave birth to a new type of woman: the suffragette. She made…
Una Marson 1905-65
In a small, sparsely furnished office in Kingston in the spring of 1928 Jamaica’s feisty first woman editor-publisher Una Marson proudly proclaimed, ‘This is the age of woman: what man has done women may do’. Born in 1905 in the…
Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) Suffragette Leader and Single Parent in Edwardian Britain
As we celebrate Mother’s Day in April 2011, it is salutary to remember women in the past who were single mums struggling to support their children while engaged in public work. Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the suffragette movement in…
Women’s History Month: Ethel Smyth
On 11 March 1903 Ethel Smyth became the first woman composer to have her work performed at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, when the Met put on her second opera, Der Wald. Music, like literature, has historically been divided…
Women’s History Month: Eunice Guthrie Murray
On 26 March 1960 the Scottish activist for women’s rights Eunice Guthrie Murray died of a stroke. She was eighty-two, and her historical links reached back through her American mother to the campaign for the abolition of slavery. Her mother…
Women’s History Month: International Women’s Day!
Today, we celebrate 100 years of International Women’s Day (IWD), so it seems appropriate to provide some historical context. International Women’s Day has its origins amongst the socialist and communist parties campaigning for rights for the working-class at the beginning…