Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T21:28:03.371Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Politics of Sexual Difference: World War I and the Demise of British Feminism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Susan Kingsley Kent
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The outbreak of war in August 1914 brought to a halt the activities of both militant and constitutional suffragists in their efforts to gain votes for women. By that time, the suffrage campaign had attained the size and status of a mass movement, commanding the time, energies, and resources of thousands of men and women and riveting the attention of the British public. In early 1918, in what it defined as a gesture of recognition for women's contribution to the war effort, Parliament granted the vote to women over the age of thirty. This measure, while welcome to feminists as a symbol of the fall of the sex barrier, failed to enfranchise some five million out of eleven million adult women. When war ended, feminists continued to agitate for votes for women on the same terms as they had been granted to men, but organized feminism, despite the fact that almost half of the potential female electorate remained disenfranchised, never regained its prewar status as a mass movement. By the end of the 1920s, feminism as a distinct political and social movement no longer existed. This was due to the impact of the war on cultural perceptions of gender. Feminists' understandings of masculinity and femininity became transformed during the war and in the immediate postwar period, until they were virtually indistinguishable from those of antifeminists.

As I have argued elsewhere, prewar British feminists regarded their movement as an attack on separate-sphere ideology and its constructions of masculinity and femininity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 3: The Dilemmas of Democratic Politics , July 1988 , pp. 232 - 253
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Kent, Susan Kingsley, Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860–1914 (Princeton, N.J., 1987)Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., chap. 6.

3 Fawcett, Millicent Garrett, What I Remember (1925; reprint, Westport, Conn., 1976), pp. 226–27Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., p. 228.

5 Quoted in Rosen, Andrew, Rise Up, Women! The Militant Campaign of the Women's Social and Political Union, 1903–1914 (London, 1974), pp. 262–63Google Scholar.

6 Quoted in ibid., p. 264.

7 Quoted in ibid., p. 265.

8 Fawcett, Millicent Garrett, The Women's Victory—and After: Personal Reminiscences, 1911–1918 (London, 1920), p. 146Google Scholar.

9 Fawcett, , What I Remember, p. 239Google Scholar.

10 Strachey, Ray, ed., Our Freedom and Its Results (London, 1936), p. 10Google Scholar.

11 Holtby, Winifred, Women and a Changing Civilization (1934; reprint, Chicago, 1978), p. 96Google Scholar.

12 Scott, Joan W., “Rewriting History,” in Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, ed. Higonnet, Margaret Randolph, Jenson, Jane, Michel, Sonya, and Weitz, Margaret Collins (New Haven, Conn., 1987), p. 27Google Scholar.

13 Kenealy, Arabella, Feminism and Sex-Extinction (London, 1920), p. viiGoogle Scholar.

14 Ibid., p. vi. “If women are to have scope and authority identical with men's, then they must forgo all privileges; must come out from their fence behind strong arms and chivalry to meet masculine blows in the face, economic and ethical—if not actual” (ibid., p. 108).

15 Clephane, Irene, Towards Sex Freedom (1935)Google Scholar, quoted in Braybon, Gail, Women Workers in the First World War: The British Experience (London, 1981), pp. 185–86Google Scholar.

16 Gibbs, Philip, Now It Can Be Told (London, 1920), p. 548Google Scholar.

17 Quoted in Braybon, p. 190.

18 Quoted in ibid., p. 189.

19 Quoted in ibid., pp. 193–94.

20 In 1911, 32.3 percent of British women reported themselves “gainfully employed.” By 1921, the figure had fallen to 30.8 percent (ibid., p. 210).

21 Vera, Brittain, The Women at Oxford: A Fragment of History (New York, 1960), p. 172Google Scholar.

22 Holtby, p. 119.

23 Hamilton, Cicely, Life Errant (New York, 1935), p. 251Google Scholar.

24 Fawcett, , Women's Victory, p. 160Google Scholar.

25 Rathbone, Eleanor, “The Old and the New Feminism,” Woman's Leader (March 13, 1925), p. 52Google Scholar.

26 “What Is Feminism?” Woman's Leader (July 17, 1925), p. 195Google Scholar.

27 Quoted in Lewis, Jane, The Politics of Motherhood, Child and Maternal Welfare in England, 1900–1939 (London, 1980), p. 170CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Rathbone, p. 52; “What Is Feminism?” p. 195.

29 Rathbone, Eleanor, “The Remuneration of Women's Services,” Economic Journal (March 1917), p. 65Google Scholar.

30 “Is Birth Control a Feminist Reform?” Woman's Leader (October 2, 1925), p. 283Google Scholar.

31 Rathbone, Eleanor, “Changes in Public Life,” in Strachey, , ed. (n. 10 above), pp. 73–74Google Scholar.

32 Ibid., p. 76.

33 Woman's Leader (March 28, 1924), p. 72Google Scholar.

34 Banks, Olive, Faces of Feminism: A Study of Feminism as a Social Movement (New York, 1986), p. 178Google Scholar.

35 Abbott, Elizabeth, “What Is Equality?” Woman's Leader (February 11, 1927), p. 4Google Scholar.

36 Ward, A. Helen, “What Is Equality?” Woman's Leader (February 25, 1927), p. 20Google Scholar.

37 Dorothy Balfour of Burleigh, ibid., p. 21.

38 “To Officers and Members of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship,” Woman's Leader (March 11, 1927), pp. 36–37Google Scholar.

39 “Statement by the Eleven Resigning Officers and Members of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship Executive Committee,” Woman's Leader (March 11, 1927), p. 38Google Scholar.

40 Hamilton (n. 23 above), pp. 208–9.

41 Holtby (n. 11 above), pp. 81–82.

42 Brittain, Vera, “Men on Women,” Time and Tide (June 22, 1928)Google Scholar, quoted in Berry, Paul and Bishop, Alan, eds., Testament of a Generation: The Journalism of Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby (London, 1985), pp. 118–19Google Scholar.

43 Holtby, p. 161.

44 Holtby, Winifred, “Black Words for Women Only,” Clarion (March 24, 1934), quoted in Berry, and Bishop, , eds., p. 86Google Scholar.

45 West, Rebecca, “Equal Pay for Men and Women Teachers,” Time and Tide (February 9, 1923)Google Scholar, quoted in Spender, Dale, Time and Tide Wait for No Man (London, 1984), p. 54Google Scholar.

46 Quoted in Jeffries, Sheila, The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality, 1880–1930 (London, 1985), p. 149Google Scholar.

47 Ibid.

48 West, Rebecca, “On a Form of Nagging,” Time and Tide (October 31, 1925), quoted in Spender, , pp. 58–59Google Scholar.

49 Hartley, Catherine Gasquoine, Motherhood and the Relationship of the Sexes (London, 1917), pp. 14, 15Google Scholar.

50 Ibid., p. 18.

51 Ibid., pp. 27, 31.

52 Pankhurst, Christabel, Pressing Problems of the Closing Age (1924), quoted in Rosen, (n. 5 above), p. 270Google Scholar.

53 See Kent (n. 1 above), chaps. 6, 7.

54 Hamilton, Cicely, “The Return to Femininity,” Time and Tide (August 12, 1927), in Spender, , p. 79Google Scholar.

55 Leed, Eric, No Man's Land: Combat and Identity in World War I (Cambridge, 979), p. 21Google Scholar.

56 Fussell, Paul, The Great War and Modern Memory (New York, 1975), p. 86Google Scholar.

57 Sassoon, Siegfried, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (New York, 1930), p. 280Google Scholar.

58 Brittain, Vera, Testament of Youth (1933; reprint, London, 1978), p. 143Google Scholar.

59 Fawcett, , What I Remember (n. 3 above), p. 218Google Scholar.

60 Pethick-Lawrence, Emmeline, My Part in a Changing World (London, 1938), p. 316Google Scholar.

61 Leed, pp. 109–10.

62 Hamilton, , Life Errant (n. 23 above), pp. 186, 187Google Scholar.

63 Ibid., p. 129.

64 Leed, p. 114.

65 Gibbs (n. 16 above), pp. 547–48.

66 Stevenson, John, British Society, 1914–45 (New York, 1984), p. 372Google Scholar.

67 Gibbs, p. 551

68 Gilbert, Sandra, “Soldier's Heart: Literary Men, Literary Women, and the Great War,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 8, no. 3 (Spring 1983): 423CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Ibid., pp. 423–24.

70 Quoted in Braybon (n. 15 above), p. 155.

71 Quoted in Gilbert, p. 425.

72 Quoted in Gould, Jenny, “Women's Military Services in First World War Britain,” in Higonnet, et al., eds. (n. 12 above), p. 119Google Scholar.

73 Haldane, Charlotte, Motherhood and Its Enemies (1927), quoted in Braybon, , pp. 222–23Google Scholar.

74 Holtby, , Women and a Changing Civilization (n. 11 above), p. 164Google Scholar.

75 Gilbert, p. 448.

76 Showalter, Elaine, The Female Malady, Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830–1980 (New York, 1985), p. 171Google Scholar.

77 Quoted in ibid., p. 173.

78 Ibid.

79 Scott, Joan W., “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (December 1986): 1053–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80 Woman's Leader (March 18, 1927), p. 50Google Scholar.

81 Fussell (n. 56 above), p. 79.

82 Hamilton, , Life Errant (n. 23 above), pp. 295–96Google Scholar.