Uptake and Genre: the Canadian Reception of Suffrage Militancy
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Women's Studies International Forum 29 (2006) 279–288 www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif Uptake and genre: The Canadian reception of suffrage militancy Katja Thieme Department of English, University of British Columbia, 397-1873 East Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z1 Synopsis From 1909 onward, the Canadian suffrage debate was heavily influenced by reports on suffrage militancy from Great Britain and the United States. Militancy played an influential role in Canadian suffrage history not through its practice–there was no Canadian militant campaign–but through an ongoing discussion of its meaning. Using Anne Freadman's notions of genre and uptake, this paper analyzes the discursive uptake of suffrage militancy—from news reports on front pages, to commentary on women's pages, to reviews of Emmeline Pankhurst's Canadian speaking engagements. The Canadian debate about militancy is a fertile site for drawing out the roles of genre and uptake in the political positioning of both suffragists and suffrage sceptics. Talk about militancy serves as a way to regulate the uptake of this particular genre of political action, whereby both sides tended to share the optimistic view that Canadian suffragists where not yet in need of militancy. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The militant activism of English suffragettes between how these activities were refigured in a Canadian con- 1903 and 1914 was well reported in the Canadian press. text, calling for a positioning of Canadian suffragism in In fact, it was one of the few occasions when suffrage relation to English militancy. Lecture tours in Canada by issues made it onto the front pages of Canadian news- English suffragettes Emmeline and Sylvia Pankhurst papers. Canadian suffrage news received limited cov- made this positioning more imperative. Their visits left erage in mainstream media and, compared to British behind one of the lingering questions of Canadian suf- feminists, Canadian suffragists produced only a very frage research: even though Emmeline Pankhurst was small number of suffrage magazines and books. News well received in Canada, why did Canadian suffragists about women's rights activities in Canada reached the not adopt some of her forms of militant political protest? public mostly through meetings of women's organiza- Why did they not engage in this genre of political ac- tions, through speeches by Canadian, American, and tion? Was there something particularly conservative British women's suffragists, and through short reports in about Canadian suffragism? I approach these questions women's pages of various newspapers. In the absence of through an analysis of how suffrage and anti-suffrage prominent suffrage news from Canada, the public per- commentary positioned Canadian feminism in relation ception of suffragism was guided largely by newspaper to suffrage militancy. Such an analysis adds a new di- commentary on English militant activities and American mension to the historical work which traces the or- suffrage campaigns. Reports on the militancy which ganizational and personal links between suffrage occurred in other countries became an integral part of the activities in Britain, the United States, and elsewhere public perception of the Canadian suffrage movement. (see, e.g., Adickes, 2002; Fletcher, 2000; Holton, 1994; Canadian newspaper reports of suffragette activities McFadden, 1999). allow us to witness the manner in which the idea of In her study of English suffragettes in Canada, Deborah militancy reached across the Atlantic. We are able to see Gorham (1975) points out that women in England fought 0277-5395/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2006.04.007 280 K. Thieme / Women's Studies International Forum 29 (2006) 279–288 much longer and in more radical ways for suffrage than of issues of militancy into the Canadian context thus Canadian women. Britain had a suffrage movement appears not so much as an act of support from across from the 1860s on; this movement manifested itself the Atlantic. Rather, it is one of the factors which in the form of numerous political organizations for determined how Canadian suffragism oriented itself women, and was propagated in various publications, within its discursive context. magazines, and novels. By the measure of its own mass publishing and public campaigning, Canadian suffra- The rhetorical function of militancy gism was much less overt. Yet, English women were granted the vote at roughly the same time as Canadian I follow roughly the convention of distinguishing women. Given this discrepancy, Gorham wonders if the between suffragists and suffragettes according to their more radical activities of English suffragettes were un- use of activist methods. The term “suffragist” tends to necessary. She concludes that this is not the case; in- describe women and men who were mildly sympathetic stead, Canadian suffragists gathered strength from the as well as key organizers and officeholders who cam- struggles of women elsewhere and used them to their paigned within the boundaries of accepted female con- advantage. In terms of the relations between British duct; “suffragette” refers to those who used what were militant and Canadian moderate suffragists, she sug- described as militant methods. In Canada the distinction gests that “suffragettes' supporters in Canada simply was used not only to differentiate methods of political ignored those facts from which they did not feel they engagement but also to set Canadian suffragists apart could draw strength” (Gorham, 1975,p.109). from English suffragettes. Our contemporary use of the What Gorham describes as a selective gathering of distinction between militant and non-militant methods strength I will consider as processes of positioning through carries its problems. Many of the activities by militants genre and uptake. I use the terms genre and uptake in the would not have been called thus and would not have way Anne Freadman (1994, 2002) has defined them. Texts drawn as much indignation if they had been carried become identified as being of a certain genre in their out by men. Between 1903 and 1908 during the British interaction with other texts. When a text finds a res- campaign, asking a question at a public meeting, or pondent, the text's generic identity can be confirmed, but it interrupting a speaker, caused one to be labelled a militant can also be modified. Freadman's understanding of genre suffragette. As we adhere to militancy as a concept of its as residing in the interrelations between texts and utter- time, we do not wish to repeat its gendered biases. ances is particularly appropriate for the Canadian discus- Recent work has questioned the way in which the sion of militancy. While militancy can be said to have term “militant” is still used to set apart certain branches played an influential role in Canadian suffrage history, it of the British suffrage campaign (most notably the work has done so less through its practice and more through an of the Women's Social and Political Union) from what ongoing discussion of its meaning. In Freadman's terms, are called the “constitutional” suffragists, those empha- the issue of militancy received a great deal of uptake. sizing more conventional, or constitutional, action to the Uptake in this sense is the selection of a discursive exclusion of protests and hunger strikes. As Sandra object. It can be the choosing of an answer to a question Stanley Holton says in Feminism and Democracy or invitation, the agreement or disagreement following (1986, p. 4), it is the “mode of campaigning, a style of a proposition or, in more concrete terms, an editor's de- agitation” that is held as the distinction between the two, cision to include a report in a newspaper. Uptake crosses not questions of suffrage as such. Holton argues that, if the boundaries between institutions and discourses; it militancy involved “simply a preparedness to resort to mediates between genres. extreme forms of violence,” then many constitutionalists Suffrage militancy in England received uptake in the would also be militants (Holton, 1986, p. 4). Even if we political reporting of Canadian newspapers. In turn, the take “militant” to mean membership in particular orga- news reports encouraged uptake by both suffragist and nizations, this assumption is complicated by the fact that anti-suffragist columnists and letter writers, with suf- many women belonged to a number of diverse suffrage fragist uptake often challenging the generic status of the societies. The distinction between militant and consti- original news report (see my section on Genres of res- tutionalist is not only difficult to apply, it “also tends to ponse). In the process of this uptake, respondents ar- obscure those currents within the suffrage movement ticulate their stance in relation to militancy. When which cut across it” (Holton, 1986, p. 4). suffragists discuss militancy, they also orient themselves In The Militant Suffrage Movement (2003), Laura toward larger questions of femininity and politics, wom- Nym Mayhall observes that, even though scholars have en's social role, or the nature of progress. The introduction long questioned the validity of a simple dichotomy K. Thieme / Women's Studies International Forum 29 (2006) 279–288 281 between militant and constitutionalist, this dichotomy Endangering people's lives by throwing acids, or of remains a powerful organizing principle for understand- breaking up political meetings, or of mobbing the ing the differences between suffrage societies. Mayhall Prime Minister of the Empire, or of horse-whipping notes that some historians characterize militancy as an another Minister in the presence of his wife on a rail- aberration, “a period of excess in women's political way platform, or of smashing with missiles the orna- activism, and one not particularly productive,” while mental windows of an historical hall, or of striking others see it as both “a culmination and a transcendence policemen whose disagreeable duty is to make both of late-Victorian women's political activism” (Mayhall, men and women keep the public peace….