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Chapter 4 - Suffragism

from Part I - 1900–1945: Ideas and Governance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2022

Christos Hadjiyiannis
Affiliation:
University of Cyprus
Rachel Potter
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
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Summary

This chapter opens with a brief survey of suffrage literature and the scholarship it has generated before honing in on a particular example: Constance Maud’s No Surrender. This novel conforms to many characteristics of suffrage fiction, playing on romance conventions and integrating fictionalised episodes from the real-world campaign. But even as No Surrender is a campaigning novel, it is also a novel of a campaign that registers and reflects the tensions that characterised the movement. Social class was a deeply contentious issue for the campaign and is one this chapter considers with a focus on Maud’s presentation of Lancashire mill-worker, Jenny Clegg. Maud’s novel raises questions about representation, authenticity, and appropriation, questions that have troubled feminist theory and practice. This chapter suggests that a fuller familiarity with the internal debates of the campaign – particularly those between adult and woman suffragists – results in a more precise sense of how the novel works as propaganda. A corollary of such a contextual approach is that more self-reflexive and self-questioning currents in No Surrender that run parallel to its primary propagandising ones are made visible.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Suffragism
  • Edited by Christos Hadjiyiannis, University of Cyprus, Rachel Potter, University of East Anglia
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature and Politics
  • Online publication: 01 December 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108886284.006
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  • Suffragism
  • Edited by Christos Hadjiyiannis, University of Cyprus, Rachel Potter, University of East Anglia
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature and Politics
  • Online publication: 01 December 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108886284.006
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Suffragism
  • Edited by Christos Hadjiyiannis, University of Cyprus, Rachel Potter, University of East Anglia
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature and Politics
  • Online publication: 01 December 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108886284.006
Available formats
×