Emmeline Pankhurst, Freedom or Death. Text Analysis PEC 1 PDF

Preview

Summary

Comentario de Texto PEC1 de Mundos Anglófonos. Emmeline Pankhurst, Freedom or Death....

Description

UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE EDUCACIÓN A DISTANCIA

MUNDOS ANGLÓFONOS PEC 1

COMENTARIO DE TEXTO EMMELINE PANKHURST: ‘FREEDOM OR DEATH’

Elena Suco López Grado en Estudios Ingleses Centro Asociado de Asturias Curso Académico 2019/2020

1) Classification of the text The text presents the speech delivered by Emmeline Pankhurst in Hartford, Connecticut, on November 13th 1913. The rally was held for a crowd of Suffragette’s supporters during her tour in the United States. At that time, both women in Britain and USA were fighting to gain the right to vote in political elections, although some states such as New York, Washington and California had already granted the women suffrage. The speech has a clear political and social statement: it is not only about gaining the women’s right to vote, but also their right to use physical force and revolutionary acts to achieve it, since this is the only way to be heard by the Parliament. At that time, the militant actions of the suffragists had reached its peak of extremism in the United Kingdom, and Emmeline Pankhurst, who was the creator and main leader of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903, was imprisoned in numerous occasions due to her acts of public disobedience and incitement of other people to commit violence. Her motto was ‘Deeds, no words’. 2) Analysis We can distinguish four main parts in the text: Pankhurst begins her speech saying that the suffragette movement has become a civil war in England. On one hand, she presents herself as a ‘soldier’ who is fighting in this revolution and on the other hand, as a criminal in accordance with her own government. Referring to recent political uprisings in Russia (1905) and China (1911–12), Pankhurst acknowledges that her audience expects revolutionaries to be male. She also compares women equally to men as human beings and she justifies the use of military actions to achieve the same rights as citizens, since men also had to adopt revolutionary methods to get their demands listened in the past. Pankhurst mentions as another example the Boston Tea Party, a protest of American colonists against Great Britain which led to the American Independence. Secondly, she explains they are referred as ‘militants’ due to their persistence in defending the right of women to vote and the consequent negative and ignoring response of the Parliament, trying to suffocate their rebelliousness sending them to jail. Making as much ‘noise’ as possible is essential to be heard, however Pankhurst concedes that there is a price to be paid for militant action and civil war. She highlights the breach between the ones who have the power and the weak, who are more prone to be ignored. The war in this case is between disenfranchised women and a powerful government run by men. However, the government underestimates women and don’t know what they are capable of doing in not ceasing the disruptions until they win the war, this is, the right to vote. Pankhurst warns that the civil war waged by women is different from other kinds of social conflicts. However, in the civil war over suffrage, there are no

clear sides because the enemy—women—are everywhere, in every class and community. To illustrate this point, she discusses the steps the British government has taken against the suffragists: imprisonment and legislation. These tactics, however, have failed to keep the suffragists down. Thirdly, Pankhurst uses the concept of the consent of the governed by the philosopher John Locke, who argued that no civil government can rule without the permission of the people. As long as women consent to the injustice of being denied their rights, they will be unjustly governed. As unconsenting citizens, they live outside the law and can generate chaos until their demands are met. As a way of protest, suffragists went on hunger strikes when they were in prison, and subsequently forced to eat with barbaric and painful methods. Pankhurst also alludes to the imposition of the ‘Cat and Mouse Act’ by the government, seeing that force-feeding wasn’t being succesuful. This was a law that allowed suffragettes to be released if they were too ill to be in jail. Finally, Pankhurst concludes her speech saying that the government must either kill women or give them the vote if they want to end this war. She urges the American men in her audience to avoid putting their own government in the same position. Then she appeals to the ethics of American Men to give women the right to vote, reminding them how they fought for their freedom during the Independence War with Britain and also in the Civil War to emancipate enslaved African Americans. She warns that American women, like their British counterparts, may end up forcing their government to choose between enfranchising women or having to kill them. Facing her own possible imprisonment upon her return to Britain, she pleads for the Americans' help in winning "this hardest of fights." Once British women have won the right to vote, women around the world will also become enfranchised in their turn. Regarding to the style of the text, is a speech with a powerful military tone, since the main purpose as we mentioned before, was the justification of the suffragette’s movement as a civil revolution. She uses a number of related terms to reinforce this idea: ‘warfare’, ‘militant’, ‘civil war’, ‘violence’, ‘revolutionaries’, ‘fight’, ‘soldier’, ‘battle’…etc. The speech has a grave and emotional line as well, since Pankhurst prefers the death and prison condemn as a free citizen, rather than refuse to keep fighting to obtain her rights. She also makes use of clever strategies and examples to defend her cause. For example, she mentions a series of historical allusions and past revolutions. Given the place where she is making the speech, it is remarkable the reference to the American Independence War to her audience to gain its sympathy, a war which was based in ideals of freedom, the same as the female suffrage fight. Pankhurst makes rhetorical questions and repetitions to strengthen the emotive content of her discourse: ‘what if the men of Hartford had a grievance the government ignored? But what if the men of Hartford did not have the power to vote?’; ‘You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more

than anybody else…’; ‘I am not going to tell you how it was done. I am not going to tell you how the women got to the mains and cut the wires’. Besides, Pankhurst uses analogies like the crying baby to illustrate the dynamic of effective politics. Those who are most vocal and disruptive get covered in the news, gain the public's attention, and see their grievances addressed. Pankhurst argues it is for this reason the suffragists decided to turn from patient advocacy to militancy. Another analogy is ‘you cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs’ comparing the inevitable need of violence sometimes to really change something in politics. 3) Conclusion The historical setting of the speech is the Edwardian Era or the ‘Belle Epoque’. The reign of Edward VII was characterized for a rich prosperity in Britain, caused by a second Industrial Revolution. This favoured the middle and upper classes but the low class people who worked in the industries lived in conditions of extreme poverty. This big inequality led to numerous social problems and women wanted to take part in looking for reforms and solutions for this issues. However, until that moment it was just socially accepted for women to intervene in public affairs with charity work. We must remember that women in that era were deeply stereotyped and it was expected of them to stay at home, looking after the children and doing domestic chores. It is important to mention the apparition of the ‘Gibson Girl’ figure in literature: the romantic, ideal of beauty in women, who was more independent and learned. Women were more conscious about their personal liberties and rights and wished to take more part in politics, to gain access to vote to change the social problems of that time. For example, they defended a law that allowed them to divorce in case of abusive husbands and have the custody of their children. Their entrance in politic affairs was not seen well by the government neither the population, even the Queen Victoria was a big detractor of the female vote. They considered the women unsuited for politics and they objected saying that they had priority over other reforms. Several attempts were made to introduce the Universal Suffrage, without success. Emmeline Pankhurst was one of the main promoters of the Women Suffrage in Britain. After realizing that women needed to go a step further and take more drastic actions to get the right to vote, she set up The Women Social and Political Union party in 1903, exclusively reserved for women membership. They intensified their militant actions to put pressure on the Parliament from 1908 invading public property, destroying public spaces, museums and art works or exploding post-boxes. However, their actions were more radicalized and dangerous, and even attempted against other people’s lives, putting a bomb in St. Paul’s Cathedral or spraying chemical products on others. This caused numerous militants’ imprisonments, who at the same time started to do hunger strikes in jail. They were forced to eat by a long catheter introduced in their mouths, a procedure who was very dangerous and humiliating. Pankhurst herself was in jail multiple times, although she was released because of her weak health. Herbert Asquith, First Minister at the time, promulgated the ‘Cat and Mouse Act’, which allowed to release Suffragettes who were ill from jail.

Following Pankhurst’s aspirations, there were other important militants who promoted controversial feminist ideas like sexual liberty or birth control between the working class people, and Suffragists kept fighting for their cause until the beginning of the First World War, when they stopped their military actions. The government released all imprisoned suffragists so they could join the workforce and support the war effort. In spite of all the attempts from the Government to suffocate the Suffragette’s movement, the debate was inevitably in front of the politics line and would be the precedent to change and put upside down, a whole social and role structure of the population, merely patriarchal. Finally, women over 30 years old and owners of property gained the partial right to vote in England on 6th February in 1918 with the Representation of People Act. It is not until 1928, just a month after Emmeline Pankhurst’s death, when women over 21 years old gain full right to vote, equally to men. Women throughout the United States gained the right to vote in all elections in 1920 through the ratification of the 19th Amendment. 4) Personal opinion Some people debate about how 'the Suffragette's used terrorist-like attacks, but women should have never been at such a disadvantage that they had to resort to violence. Thanks to these women’s tireless fight, we gained the right to have a voice and being listened to. Nevertheless, women rights are still a highly topical subject at the moment, and maybe we still have a long way to go in terms of equal pay, sexist attitudes, misogynistic violence and sexual abuse. It is now time, like the suffragists, our grandmothers and mothers did before us, to raise our voice for our rights and equality as human beings.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Living Heritage. Women and the vote. URL https://www.parliament.uk/about/livingheritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/overview/ British Library. Votes for women. URL https://www.bl.uk/votes-for-women Biography.com Editors. April 2, 2014. Emmeline Pankhurst Biography. URL https://www.biography.com/activist/emmeline-pankhurst Wojtczak, Helena. 2009. British women’s emancipation since the Renaissance. The attitude of Queen Victoria to the women’s right movement. Letter from Queen Victoria to Sir Theodore Martin. (1870). URL http://www.historyofwomen.org/suffrage.html Bulo, Kate. March 1, 2018. The Gibson Girl: The turn of the century’s “ideal” woman, independent and feminine. URL https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/03/01/gibsongirl/ Lesch, Rachel. 2017. Women in the Edwardian and Interwar Era. Suffragettes and other scandalous women. URL https://vocal.media/viva/women-in-the-edwardian-andinterwar-era B. Anthony, Susan. National Women’s History Museum. Crusade for the Vote. Timeline of the women suffrage in USA. URL http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/ Moseley, Alexander. John Locke: Political Philosophy. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. URL https://www.iep.utm.edu/locke-po/ Suffragette. Directed by Sarah Gavron. Performed by Carey Mulligan, Meryl Streep, Helena Bonham Carter, 2015. Prats, Joaquín et al. ‘La Guerra de Independencia’, ‘La Segunda Revolución Industrial’, ‘China: el fin de un imperio milenario’ y ‘La Revolución Rusa. La URSS’. Historia del Mundo Contemporáneo. Anaya, 2008....