This novel is an interesting journey in women’s history throughout the twentieth century.
It starts in 1868, when we get to know Mary Morrison. The main even that changes her life is when she and her parents go tot he derby in Epsom. The Derby Stakes, popularly known as The Derby, is a horse race in England open to three-year-old thoroughbredcolts and fillies. It is run at Epsom Downs Racecourse in Surrey over a distance of one mile in early June each year.
When Mary and Elizabeth go to live with Alice and Granny, the latter keeps referring to Mrs Beeton and her Book of Household Management. Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, also published as Mrs Beeton’s Cookery Book, is an extensive guide to running a household in Victorian Britain, edited by Isabella Beeton and first published as a book in 1861. During the particularly bitter winter of 1858–59 Isabella prepared her own soup that she served to the poor of Pinner. The recipe would become the only entry in her Book of Household Management that was her own.
Another book that Mary also refers to is Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792), written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the 18th century who did not believe women should have an education. She argues that women ought to have an education commensurate with their position in society, claiming that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children and because they could be “companions” to their husbands, rather than mere wives. Instead of viewing women as ornaments to society or property to be traded in marriage, Wollstonecraft maintains that they are human beings deserving of the same fundamental rights as men.
.In 1887 Mary and her children join the Jubilee celebrations. The Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria was celebrated on 20 June 1887. Victoria marked the fiftieth anniversary of her accession on 20 June 1887. It was celebrated with a banquet to which 50 European kings and princes were invited. The following day, she participated in a procession in an open landau through London to Westminster Abbeyescorted by Colonial Indian cavalry. On her return to the Palace, she went to her balcony and was cheered by the crowd.
Around that time, the law changed to allow women to own property. The Married Women’s Property Act 1882 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that significantly altered English law regarding the property rights of married women, which besides other matters allowed married women to own and control property in their own right.
Mary, Alice, and Granny start to fight for women’s vote. We learn that John Stuart Mill tried to get the vote for women. John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 8 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, feminist, and civil servant. Mill can be considered among the earliest women’s rights advocates. His book The Subjection of Women (1861, published 1869) is one of the earliest written on this subject by a male author. In The Subjection of Women Mill attempts to make a case for perfect equality. He talks about the role of women in marriage and how it needed to be changed. There, Mill comments on three major facets of women’s lives that he felt are hindering them: society and gender construction, education, and marriage. He argued that the oppression of women was one of the few remaining relics from ancient times, a set of prejudices that severely impeded the progress of humanity.
Mary also begins a campaign to improve the conditions of women in match factories. This reflects a strike held in 1888. The London matchgirls’ strike of 1888 was a strike of the women and teenage girls working at the Bryant and May Factory in Bow, London. The strike was caused by the poor working conditions in the match factory, including fourteen-hour work days, poor pay, excessive fines and the severe health complications of working with white phosphorus, but was sparked by the dismissal of one of the workers on or about 2 July 1888. Social activist Annie Besant became involved in the situation and published an article in her halfpenny weekly paper “The Lost Ink” on 23 June 1888.This had angered the Bryant & May management who tried to get their workforce to sign a paper contradicting it, which they refused to do. This led to the dismissal, which set off the strike with approximately 1,400 women and girls refusing to work by the end of the first day. The management quickly offered to reinstate the fired employee but the women then demanded other concessions, particularly in relation to the unfair fines which were deducted from their wages. A deputation of women went to management but were not satisfied by their response. By 6 July the whole factory had stopped work. That same day about 100 of the women went to see Besant and to ask for her assistance. Besant helped at meetings with the management and terms were formulated at a meeting on 16 July, in accordance with which it was stated that fines, deductions for cost of materials and other unfair deductions should be abolished and that in future grievances could be taken straight to the management without having to involve the foremen who had prevented the management from knowing of previous complaints. Also, very importantly, meals were to be taken in a separate room, where the food would not be contaminated with phosphorus. These terms were accepted and the strike ended.
The next part part focuses on Elizabeth, who becomes a doctor, and works for the Royal Free. Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust (formerly Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust) is an NHS foundation trust based in London. The Free Hospital was founded in 1828 to provide free hospital care to the poor. The title ‘Royal’ was granted by Queen Victoria in 1837 in recognition of the hospital’s treatment of cholera victims. For a long period the Royal Free Hospital was the only hospital in London to offer clinical instruction to women and was closely associated with the London School of Medicine for Women, later renamed Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine.
Royal Free Hospital moved to its present site in the mid-1970s, bringing together the old Royal Free Hospital on Gray’s Inn Road with the Lawn Road, New End and Hampstead General hospitals.[5] The former Hampstead Children’s Hospital became the nursing accommodation for the hospital.[6]
This part in the book focuses on women’s fight to gain the vote. This is something I’ve already known a bit about from previous books. In this case, Elizabeth is first involved in the fight in Mrs Millicent Fawcett’s National Union. Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett (11 June 1847 – 5 August 1929) was an English feminist, intellectual, political and union leader, and writer. However, she is primarily known for her work as a suffragist. Millicent Fawcett was a moderate campaigner, distancing herself from the militant and violent activities of the Pankhursts and the Women’s Social and Political Union. She believed that their actions were in fact harming women’s chances of gaining the vote, as they were alienating the MPs who were debating whether or not to give women the vote, as well as souring much of the general public towards the campaign.
I already know that Mrs Pankhurst used more violent ways to fight for the vote. She was the leader of the British suffragette movement.
There are some events about Mrs Pankhurst’s political career. One instance is when she is sent to jail for interrupting Churchill’s meeting. During a Liberal rally at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, in October 1905, Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst interrupted a political meeting to ask Churchill and Sir Edward Grey if they believed women should have the right to vote. Neither man replied. The two women got out a banner declaring “Votes for Women”, and shouted at the two politicians to answer their questions. Kenney and Pankhurst were thrown out of the meeting and arrested for causing an obstruction and a technical assault on a police officer.
The women believed that Keir Hardie could be on their side as he believed in equal rights for everybody. He was part of the Labour Party, but in 1908, Hardie resigned as leader of the Labour Party. Hardie spent the rest of his life campaigning for votes for women and developing a closer relationship with Sylvia Pankhurst.
On 21 June 1908 500,000 activists rallied in Hyde Park to demand votes for women.
The women show the suffragette colours: white, green, and purple. From 1908, the WSPU adopted the colour scheme of violet, white and green: purple symbolised dignity, white purity, and green hope. These three colours were used for banners, flags, rosettes and badges.
We also know about the suffragettes’ hunger strikes in prison and their being force-fed.
John, Elizabeth’s husband, starts to work for The Mirror, and we learn that the newspaper was launched to cater for the taste of gentlewomen. The Daily Mirror is a British national daily tabloid newspaper founded in 1903. The Daily Mirror was launched on 2 November 1903 by Alfred Harmsworth as a newspaper for women, run by women.
The newspaper that the suffragettes edited was called “Votes for Women”.
On 7 March 1913, aged 27, Olive Warry and Lilian Lenton were sent to Holloway Prison for setting fire to the tea pavilion at Kew Gardens, causing £900 worth of damage.
In the summer of 1913, the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies organised a mass march to London from seventeen cities across the country. The aim was to draw attention to the suffrage cause and particularly to the constitutional aims of the NUWSS. It was believed that the public, who were by now becoming accustomed to repeated sensationalist stories about militant tactics, should be reminded that there the women’s suffrage movement had a much larger constitutional and non-militant wing and that what was described by one of the organisers as ‘the enormous educational work that is being done by many thousands of peaceful, law-abiding Suffragists’ should be promoted. The march followed eight routes through the towns and villages of pre-war England to converge at a rally in Hyde Park on 26th July followed by a service at St. Paul’s Cathedral the following day.
One of the characters in the book is a real one: Emily Davison. Her work and death leaves a real mark on the characters in the book. Emily Wilding Davison (11 October 1872 – 8 June 1913) was a militant suffragette who fought for women’s suffrage in Britain. She was jailed on nine occasions and force-fed 49 times. She stepped in front of King George V‘s horse Anmer at the Epsom Derby on 4 June 1913, suffering fatal injuries. Her funeral on 14 June 1913 was organised by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). Thousands of suffragettes accompanied the coffin and tens of thousands of people lined the streets of London.
The next part starts with Kitty starting work as a nurse in Royal Victoria, a military hospital in Netley. It became the 28th US General Hospital from 1944 to 1945 during the Invasion of Europe.
Kitty then joins the Fany. The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (Princess Royal’s Volunteer Corps) (FANY) is a British independent all-female registered charity formed in 1907 and active in both nursing and intelligence work during the World Wars.
In 1918 the women finally gain the vote. The Representation of the People Act 1918 was an Act of Parliament passed to reform the electoral system in the United Kingdom. This act was the first to include practically all men in the political system and began the inclusion of women.The Representation of the People Act 1918 widened suffrage by abolishing practically all property qualifications for men and by enfranchising women over 30 who met minimum property qualifications. However, women were still not politically equal to men (who could vote from the age of 21); full electoral equality did not occur until the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928.
In 1923, Kitty starts working in Holloway Clinic, where she helps women who want some kind of birth control. Marie Charlotte Carmichael Stopes (15 October 1880 – 2 October 1958) was a British author, palaeobotanist and campaigner for eugenics and women’s rights. She opened the Mothers’ Clinic at 61 Marlborough Road, Holloway, North London, on 17 March 1921. The clinic was run by midwives and supported by visiting doctors; it offered mothers birth control advice and taught them birth control methods and dispensed Stopes own “Pro-Race” brand cervical cap. The free clinic was open to all married women for knowledge about reproductive health. Stopes opposed abortion; she tried to discover alternatives for families and increase knowledge about birth control and the reproductive system.
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