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Portable Politics: Creating New Space for Suffrage-ing Women

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Susan Carlson
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Abstract

A few of the plays written in support of the movement for women's suffrage in Britain before the First World War have recently been recovered and published, but most of these were intended for some kind of professional or at least conventional production. Susan Carlson is here concerned to look also at some of the pieces which saw print only in the ephemeral suffrage press, and production (if at all) only as part of meetings or demonstrations. Breaking down traditional distinctions between social, political, and theatrical spaces, she argues that all were part both of the dramatization of the struggle, and also of a broader reclamation of public spaces for women, whether of a public venue such as the Albert Hall, outdoor spaces such as Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square – or the humbler and lonelier space of the street corners on which women sold the suffrage newspapers that contained the plays – some of them about women on street corners selling suffrage newspapers.…Susan Carlson is Professor of English and Associate Provost at Iowa State University. Her books include Women and Comedy (University of Michigan Press), and she has recently published essays on Aphra Behn, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Shakespeare, and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century women playwrights. This essay is part of a longer study of British suffrage theatre and its connections to Edwardian productions of Shakespeare's works.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , November 2001 , pp. 334 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2001

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References

Notes and References

1. ‘The Pioneer Players’, Common Cause, 15 June 1911, p. 178. The actress Ellen Terry's conversion of Shakespeare heroines into suffrage leaders is the specific-matter in this review.

2. Wilson, Elizabeth, The Sphinx in the City: Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women (Berkley: University of California Press, 1991), p. 14Google Scholar.

3. See Woolf's, essay ‘Character in Fiction’, in The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 3, 1919–1924, ed. McNeillie, Andrew (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), p. 421Google Scholar. Henri Lefebvre echoes Woolf's sentiment in his study of social space, noting that: ‘The fact is that around 1910 a certain space was shattered. It was the space of common sense, of knowledge (savoir), of social practice, of political power, a space hitherto enshrined in everyday discourse’. He elaborates later on the specific role of painters in this change: ‘Around 1910 academic painters were still painting “beautiful” figures in an “expressive” way: faces that were moving because they expressed emotions.… The pictorial avant-garde, meanwhile, were busily detaching the meaningful from the expressive.… If we are to believe the most authoritative commentators, the turning-point was 1907’. See The Production of Space, trans. Nicholson-Smith, Donald (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), p. 25Google Scholar, 300–301.

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7. Dolores Hayden also notes how attempts to limit women's freedom have been instrumental in defining both public and private space: ‘One of the consistent ways to limit the economic and political rights of groups has been to constrain social reproduction by limiting access to space. For women, the body, the home, and the street have all been arenas of conflict.’ Hayden, Dolores, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995), p. 22Google Scholar.

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9. As reported in ‘Other Suffrage News: The Actresses' Franchise League’, The Vote, 23 December 1909, p. 105.

10. ‘Selling the Paper’, The Common Cause, 17 March 1910, p. 690.

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15. ‘Paper-Selling Report: an Original Christmas Procession’, Votes for Women, 12 December 1913, p. 163.

16. ‘An Idea for a Summer Holiday’, Votes for Women, 28 May 1909, p. 724.

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18. Chapin, A., At the Gates, The Vote, 16 12 1909, p. 94Google Scholar. The full play is in the Lord Chamberlain's Plays at the British Library. It was scheduled for performance on 13 December 1909 at the Albert Hall. The play was not performed, however, due to an over-full bill at the Albert Hall that night. See ‘Secretary's Report, June 1909–1910’, AFL Archives, Fawcett Library, p. 6.

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22. It was one of several such such large-scale events; the WSPU had sponsored the ‘Woman's Exhibition’ in May.

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25. Grosz, Elizabeth, Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies (New York; London: Routledge, 1995), p. 109, 105Google Scholar.

26. Lefebvre makes this point that ‘monumental space’ is a location where those in a society mark their membership (op. cit., p. 220).

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30. McGowan, M. Slieve, ‘Ibsen at the Court Theatre’, The Vote, 18 03 1911, p. 254Google Scholar.

31. See Fawcett's earlier speech, ‘Home and Politics: an Address Delivered at Toynbee Hall and Elsewhere’ (London: Central and East of England Society for Women's Suffrage, c. 1887).

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34. Vaughan, Gertrude, The Woman with the Pack, Votes for Women, 22 12 1911, p. 187Google Scholar.

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37. St. John, Christopher, The Wilson Trial, 1909Google Scholar, Lord Chamberlain's Plays, British Library. Edy Craig was the producer for the one matinee performance.

38. St. John, Christopher, Her Will, 1914Google Scholar, Lord Chamberlain's Plays, British Library.