Atdtda22: [42.1i] Suffrag, 607

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Emily Davison was one of the best-known militants.  It's likely she had a few screws loose, but she became a martyr for the cause of women's suffrage.  The link gives details of her militant activities.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/emily_wilding_davison.htm

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com>
>Sent: Nov 13, 2007 12:27 AM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Atdtda22: [42.1i] Suffrag, 607
>
>[607.22] ... the many Suffragettes ...
>
>Cf. Sands on 447: "Damned Suffragettes again I shouldn't wonder."
>
>Also cf. the Silent Frock scene on 501: "A hundred women on the move ..."
>etc.
>
>By early 1906, these militants had become known as "suffragettes" after the
>halfpenny mass-circulation Daily Mail derisively substituted the diminutive
>"ette" for "ist". Suffragettes formed a number of organizations, including
>the Women's Social and Political Union (1903), the Women's Freedom League
>(1907), the Men's Political Union (1910), and the Women's Tax Resistance
>League (1909). Significant splits and regroupings would result in creation
>of the United Suffragists (1914), the East London Federation of Suffragettes
>(1914), the Suffragettes of the Women's Social and Political Union (1915),
>and the Independent WSPU (1916). Between 1906 and 1918, suffragettes refined
>the right of resistance to illegitimate government as a right grounded in
>British constitutional principles. In contrast, the National Union of
>Women's Suffrage Societies, which in 1897 had united warring factions of the
>nineteenth-century movement and would become the largest suffrage
>organization of the Edwardian period, continued largely to confine itself to
>the assertion of women's right to citizenship. [...] 
>
>Resistance emerged as a feature of suffragettes' engagement with liberal
>citizenship for a number of reasons. One possibility is that some
>suffragists tired of presenting their demands within the same narrowly
>defined constitutional framework that allowed for the mere assertion of
>right. The presentation of endless petitions and incessant lobbying of
>members of Parliament for legislation that was inevitably defeated began to
>frustrate many women active in the movement. Suffragettes were therefore
>believed to have been motivated to move from constitutionalism to various
>forms of anarchy because seemingly having exhausted the legislative
>possibilities for women's enfranchisement, they fully rejected government's
>authority.
>
>From: Laura E. Nym Mayhall, The Militant Suffrage Movement: Citizenship and
>Resistance in Britain, 1860-1930, Oxford University Press, 2003, 40-41.
>