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Conclusions

The Woman Question
Querelle des Femmes (French)
Frauenfrage (German)
Zhenskii Vopros (Russian)
Kvinnofrågan (Swedish)

Before getting to the conclusion, I would like to pass along a few additional scattered references to advocates of woman suffrage. These comments are in more or less historical order.

In Only Paradoxes to Offer Scott writes, "Nina Gelbart sees this oppositional journalism – exemplified by Le journal des dames in its twenty – year history (1759-1778) – as the well-spring not only for de Gouge's demands that women participate in politics, but also for much of the republican feminism of the Revolution." p. 31, Scott,

Referring to events during the American Revolution, from my favorite feminist, Matilda Joslyn Gage writes in "Preceding Causes"

"In 1778, only two years after the Declaration of Independence was adopted, and while the flames of war were still spreading over the country, Hannah Lee Corbin, of Virginia, the sister of General Richard Henry Lee, wrote him, protesting against the taxation of women unless they were allowed to vote. He replied that "women were already possessed of that right," thus recognizing the fact of woman's enfranchisement in one of the results of the new government, and it is on record that women in Virginia did at an early day exercise the right of voting. New Jersey also specifically secured this right to women on the 2d of July, 1776 - a right exercised by them for more than a third of a century. Thus our country started into governmental life freighted with the protests of the Revolutionary Mothers against being ruled without their consent. From that hour to the present, women have been continually raising their voices against political tyranny, and demanding for themselves equality of opportunity in every department of life."

Etta Palm d'Aelders's, one of the staunchest defenders of women during the French Revolution and a part of the circle that formed around the Marquise de Condorcet, wrote Appeal to Frenchwomen Concerning the Regeneration of Morals and the Necessity for Women's Influence in a Free Government (France, 1791) (Sorry, but I lost the reference.)

In Law, Gender, & Injustice: A Legal History of U.S. Women Joan Hoff indicates that American women had the right to vote in all colonies when the Constitution was adopted, but states rescinded right of women to vote. New Jersey the last state to do so in 1807.

In The Untold Story of the Iroquois Influence on Early Feminists Sally Roesch Wagner describes the enormous amount of political power Iroquois women had. Women were so highly regarded in their culture that Iroquois women did not want to be assimilated into white man's society – they thought they would be taking a step down.

Dagmar Herzog adds Louise Dittmar to the list of women writers known to have written pro-suffrage works in pre-Revolutionary Germany. In Intimacy and Exclusion: Religious Politics in Pre-Revolutionary Baden, Herzog writes of Dittmar's first two (anonomously published) works, "The first two, Bekannte Geheimnisse (Open Secrets, 1845) and Skizzen und Briefe (Sketches and Letters, 1845) covered a wide range of political and social issues and addressed women's disenfranchisement in scathing terms." (p. 144)

Audrey Oldfield in Woman Suffrage in Australia A Gift or a Struggle? (p. 6) writes, "When the British male franchise was extended in the First Reform Act of 1832, legislators made it quite clear that women were excluded by using for the first time the term 'male persons' for eligible voters. Mary Smith, a Yorkshire woman, protested (unsuccessfully) by presenting the first woman suffrage petition to the British Parliament on behalf of those with the necessary property qualification."

Regading the same incident Robson and Robson write (p. xiv) "In 1832, after the passing of the Reform Bill, which for the first time legislated a uniform franchise for the country, Mary Smith unsuccessfully but publicly petitioned Parliament for the vote, arguing that she had all the qualifications specified in the act, which indeed she had." Later (p. xv-xvi), Robson and Robson indicate that it was the rejection of Mary Smith's petition that stirred William Fox to pen his defense of woman suffrage for the August 1832 issue of Monthly Repository.

Dale Spender in Women of Ideas (p. 398) writes, "In [September] 1832, William Johnson Fox (Member of Parliament for Oldham) had written an article entitled "A Political and Social anomaly" for the Monthly Repository in which he had pointed to the foolishness of the inclusion of the word 'male' in the Reform Act, and in 1845, at a meeting in Covent Gardens, Richard Cobden stated unequivocally that it was ridiculous that women had been deprived of their right to vote."

Here are three references to a speeches Disraeli gave to the House of Commons in favor of Joseph Hume's motion that women be given the vote.

Bonnie S. Anderson in Joyous Greetings (p. 174) writes, "In June 1848, radical member of Parliament Joseph Hume moved that the vote be given to all householders, male and female alike. Although Benjamin Disraeli spoke in its favor, the motion failed, causing little stir among feminists; only Anne Knight responded to it and she was still living in France at the time."

Karen Offen in European Feminisms (p. 111) refers to the same 1848 speech by Disraeli when she writes,

In London, the venerable Times took notice when Benjamin Disraeli (Who would one day be Queen Victoria's Prime Minister) raised the issue of parliamentary suffrage for women once again in the British House of Commons during a mid-June debate on the representation of the people:

I believe that in another country some ridicule has been excited by a gentleman who has advocated the rights of the other sex. (A laugh.) But, Sir, as far as mere abstract reasoning is concerned, I should like to hear any gentleman of those who will support the hon. member get up and oppose that claim. In a country governed by a woman (hear) – where you allow women to form a part of the other estate of the realm, for women are peeresses in their own right – where women possess manors, and hold law courts – and where women are by law elected as churchwardens (a laugh) – I don't see when women have so much to do in this country in state and church, why, when you come to the reason of the thing, they should not also have the right to vote.

Offen quoted from Benjamin Disraeli, speech during the 20 June 1848 debate in the House of Commons on the reforms of representation: Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, 11 and 12 Vic., 1847-1848, vol 99 (29 May – 30 June 1848), p. 950, also reported in The Times (London), 21 June 1848

The following was posted at about.com Women's History section, "In the great extensions of suffrage in England in 1848, and amendment for the extension of suffrage to women was introduced in Parliament by Mr. Disraeli. Lord Northcote, Lord John Manners, and other conservatives, upheld it; but the liberal leaders opposed it, Gladstone and John Bright among them. John Bright's family were strenuous for the movement, and he had fancied himself its friend until the issue came; then the old champion of freedom proved true to the instinct that guards it in the nation."

The last paragraph of Harriet Taylor Mill's Enfranchisement of Women reads, "There are indications that the example of America will be followed on this side of the Atlantic; and the first step has been taken in that part of England where every serious movement in the direction of political progress has its commencement – the manufacturing districts of the North. On the 13th of February 1851, a petition of women, agreed to by a public meeting at Sheffield, and claiming the elective franchise, was presented to the House of Lords by the Earl of Carlisle."

John Stuart Mill in a speech (which can be found in Robson and Robson) to the House of Commons, 17 July 1866 refers to a speech by Benjamin Disraeli, Speech on the Representation of the People Bill (27 April 1866), PD, 3rd ser., vol. 183, col 99) when he says, "I listened with pleasure and gratitude to the right honourable Gentleman who is now Chancellor of the Exchequer when in his speech on the second reading of the Reform Bill, he said he saw no reason why women of independent means should not possess the electoral franchise, in a country where they can preside in manorial courts and fill parish offices-to which let me add, and the Throne."

Usually ignored, the small country, Isle of Man, lying on an island between Great Britain and Ireland, granted women suffrage in 1881. Frances Power Cobbe writes of this event in her article "Introduction" in Theodore Stanton's The Woman Question in Europe. Except for what Cobbe has written, I have been able to find to other information of the quest of Manx women for suffrage. Cobbe writes,

Reference has just been made to the experience of the Territory of Wyoming in the matter of women's suffrage. England has within the last two years had the benefit of seeing the experiment of giving votes to women tested in a sort of English Wyoming, i. e., the Isle of Man. After a spirited contest between the two branches of the Manx legislature in the year 1880, the representative chamber, the House of Keys, prevailed upon the upper chamber to consent to the enfranchisement of women owners of real estate of the annual value of £4 and upwards. Women occupiers and lodgers are still excluded; but the feeling in the House of Keys was so strong in favor of giving women some share of representation that they at last consented as a compromise to accept the limited measure of enfranchisement which was offered by the other House. The bill received the royal assent early in 1881, and the first election in which women took part was held immediately afterward (March 21, l88l). The women showed the most marked appreciation of their new privilege by polling in large numbers, and the universal opinion in the island seems to have been expressed by one of the gentlemen who was returned, viz., "that the new political element had acted in the most admirable manner."

As I have suggested that the Isle of Man may be regarded as occupying in relation to England a somewhat similar position to that of Wyoming in relation to the United States, I ought, perhaps, for American readers, to point out some of the reasons which make the extension of the parliamentary suffrage to women in the Isle of Man even more important as a political experiment than the enfranchisement of women in Wyoming.

The Manx constitution is of very great antiquity; the island has never been incorporated with Great Britain; the governor is nominated by the queen, and certain dues, such as customs, royalties on mines, etc., are paid to Great Britain. But the island has complete legislative independence. It sends no representative to the House of Commons. It has a miniature Parliament of its own, which is of even greater antiquity than the Parliament of Great Britain. The population of the island is 54,042, its area, 180,000 acres. In area, Wyoming greatly surpasses the Isle of Man, for the Territory covers 62,645,120 acres. The population, however, of Wyoming is only 9,118; therefore, whereas the island has one person to (approximately) every three and one-third acres, there are about 6,870 acres to every person in the Territory. An example set by an old established and comparatively thickly peopled community like the Isle of Man has, I think, more significance than a similar example set by the youngest and smallest of the members which make up the corporate body of the American nation. It is a thing to be expected that the newly settled regions of the United States should become the field for making all kinds of social and political experiments. The freedom which the American Constitution admits in this direction is one of its greatest merits. But I think it may be claimed that when a similar experiment is tried with success in a place that is rigidly conservative of its ancient institutions, the history of which can be traced back to the sixth century, the example is one that is entitled to even greater respect than that set by the good people of Wyoming.

In Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Modern Japan, Sharon L. Sievers discusses the 19th century Japanese woman suffrage movement!!

Now, to the conclusions.

As with all social reform movements, the quest for women suffrage began with a few visionaries asking, "Why Not?" Their questions and answers were repeated for four generations, each time resonating with more and more people. By the end of our period, what had started as the challenges to the established-order-to-be by of a pair of eighteenth-century philosophés and a handful of revolutionaries turned into a movement of women around the world, boldly claiming their rights of citizenship and then other rights which belong to them as members of the human family. A few years after our period ends, women throughout Europe were enfranchised and additional movements for the emancipation of women were created around the world.

As has been seen, only in Great Britain and her colonies and in the US were women legally free for most of the century to pursue economic and political reform, although they were still subject to misrepresentation, ridicule, social ostracism, and worse by their fellow citizens. Indeed, in much of post-1848 Europe women were legally prohibited from forming political organizations or even from publishing newspapers; and the restraints on men's freedom of speech and assembly were also severe. In these places, the power of the state was used to silence a generation of female activists from working on the cause of women's emancipation.

Feminism did not die during these periods of retrenchment, it just manifested itself in other ways – such as quests for educational opportunities and entry to the professions by women, campaigns for "social purity" and temperance, improvements in married women's property rights, and development of Republican or patriotic motherhood movements.

The international nature of the feminist movement is clearly evident in the study of woman suffrage in the era before the creation of organizations devoted to winning the vote for women. The idea would pop up now here, now there; wherever it was safe for women to expound it. In periods of repression, the idea would take refuge in the few remaining safe havens, waiting the opportunity to burst forth in a new period of progress. Women's movements thrive when they become international in scope.

The earliest advocates for women suffrage understood that suffrage alone would not cure the problems besetting women and proposed comprehensive plans for remaking all aspects of society. Often women of the working class, these advocates crafted plans that addressed such issues as how to juggle a family and a job when you are too poor to hire a nanny, the religious discrimination against women, the sexual double standard, the legal disabilities of women, domestic violence, prostitution, the lack of educational and employment opportunities – all concerns that still plague women as women.

As middle-class women, the "right sort of women", picked up the banner of woman suffrage, the issues which suffrage advocates were willing to address narrowed to one issue and one issue only: votes for women. Perhaps this narrowing of feminist discourse among suffragists was necessary to paper over the differences between women and to convince men that giving political power to women would not threaten their position or power, enabling the suffrage movement to move forward and votes for women to become a reality. Yet, the writings by the earlier advocates of woman suffrage contain a zest and passion that is lacking in later writings on the topic.

I hope you have enjoyed Sunshine for Women's Women's History Month 2002 presentation. You can read a bibliography of all works referenced in this series at the WHM 2003 Bibliography

Footnotes:

References:

about.com, Women's History, From e-text of Woman and the Republic by Helen Kendrick Johnson, originally published in 1913, Chapter II: Is Woman Suffrage Democratic? http://www.womenshistory.about.com/library/etext/bl_watr_ch02.htm Bonnie S. Anderson, Joyous Greetings: The First International Women's Movement 1830 – 1860 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000]

Frances Power Cobbe, 'Introduction' in The Woman Question in Europe by Theodore Stanton [New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1884] reprinted by [New York: Source Book Press 1970] pp. 26-28

Matilda Joslyn Gage, SB Anthony, and EC Stanton, "Preceding Causes", History of Woman Suffrage [1881]

Dagmar Herzog, Intimacy and Exclusion: Religious Politics in Pre-Revolutionary Baden [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996]

Joan Hoff, Law, Gender, & Injustice: A Legal History of U.S. Women [New York: New York University Press, 1991]

Harriet Taylor Mill, Enfranchisement of Women, 1851 Taken from Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Sexual Equality: Writings by John Stuart Mill, Harriet Taylor Mill, and Helen Taylor [Toronto: University or Toronto, 1994] pp. 178-203

Karen Offen, European Feminisms 1700 – 1795: A Political History [Stanford, Ca: Stanford University Press, 2000]

Audrey Oldfield, Woman Suffrage in Australia A Gift or a Struggle? [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992]

Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (eds.), Sexual Equality: Writings by John Stuart Mill, Harriet Taylor Mill, and Helen Taylor [Toronto: University of Toronto, 1994] pp. xv - xvi

Joan Wallach Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996] Scott cites Gelbart, Feminine and Opposition Journalism, especially pp. 29-37

Sharon L. Sievers, Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Modern Japan, [Stanford, Ca: Stanford University Press, 1983]

Dale Spender, Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them [Pandora, 1982]

Sally Roesch Wagner, The Untold Story of the Iroquois Influence on Early Feminists [Sky Carrier Press, 1996]

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last updated February 2003