Blog Post #3 - Secondary Sources (Maybe)

     This week for my blog post, I planned to analyze two of my secondary sources. The first of which being The Suffragettes: Towards Emancipation edited by Dr. Marie Mulvey Roberts and Tamae Mizuta. Upon opening this source, I realized that it was not in fact a secondary source, but a primary source that had been edited and republished. This source is actually a memoir by Emmeline Pankhurst, with the name of My Own Story. I decided that since I had already chosen it for this week I would continue my analysis anyway even though it is a primary source. The memoir itself it broken up into three separate “books”, the first two of which I decided against analyzing. The reason being that the first book concerned Emmeline’s childhood and the second focused on the peaceful work of the Women’s Social and Political Union, neither of these are the focus of my topic. The third book “The Women’s Revolution” centers on my topic so my analysis will begin there.

      For Emmeline this movement centered on more than just fighting for rights, it began with the belief that women should be equal politically in England with men. She not only concerned herself with the rights of the elite women of the time, but also included working class women in her organization. In this, the third section of her memoir, Emmeline also focuses on her daughter Christabel’s work in sustaining the organization and moving toward more militaristic tendencies. The reason Christabel and Emmeline shifted toward militancy centered on the lack of progress they made with their more peaceful protests and demonstrations (Roberts 266). These women realized they needed the attention of the press and the public. The one way to guarantee their message was heard was through more radical ideas and actions (Roberts 263). The rest of the source offers more information on the movement, although it does have a bias, being written by Emmeline Pankhurst.

     The other source I chose to analyze this week is The Militant Suffrage Movement: Citizenship and Resistance in Britain, 1860 – 1930 written by Laura E. Nym Mayhall. This upon looking inside is actually a secondary source of compiled information. The beginning of this book does not offer anything of use to my topic because it is too early. Instead, I started my analysis on the third chapter of the book, which begins in 1906. This is still a little early for my topic because I am focused on the militancy, which did not gain traction until about 1909 with the peak of militancy occurring between 1912 – 1914 (Mayhall 81). The first chapters offer lots of background information on the movement, especially with the various suffrage groups working within England at the time. This is useful because it offers comparison to the WSPU. Although in the beginning, membership fluidly moved between all the organizations, causing many women to be members of multiple suffrage organizations (Mayhall 40). This source will offer lots of insight into the background of the suffrage movement.

Sources:

Mayhall, Laura E. Nym. The Militant Suffrage Movement: Citizenship and Resistance in Britain, 1860 – 1930. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Roberts, Marie M., and Tamae Mizuta, eds. The Suffragettes: Towards Emancipation. London: Routledge & Thoemmes Press, 1993.