Monday 28 February 2011

Beauty

Nature

"one has great need of the country and its message of purity ." mr eager views it as a medium through which you cleanae yourself of any unwanted feelings - delicacy.

Chapter 6
"don't go fighting the spring."

"don't you suppose there's any difference between spring in nature and spring in man? But there we go, praising the one and condeming the other as improper, ashamed that the same laws work eternally through both."

The use mackintosh squares to protect from the damp grass this shows a separation from nature.

"in the company of this common man the world was beautiful and direct. For the first time she felt the influe ce of spring."

"the view Was forming at last; she could discern thte river, the golden plain..."

"light and beauty enveloped her"

Chapter 7
"rain and darkness came together. The two ladies huddled together urn an inadequate parasol"
- nature and its power cannot be defeated by delicate parasols
The storm prevokes them to show real emotion "the floads of love nd sincerity, which might fructify every hour of life, burst forth in tumult."

" the sky, you know, was gold, and the ground all blue, and for a moment he looked like someone from a book."

Chapter 9
"the outdoor world was not very familiar to him, and occasionally he went wrong in a question or fact"

"I do believe that birds and trees and the sky area the most wonderful things in life" "nature-simplest of topics" - he obviously doesnt underhand or appreciate nature. He sees it in a very construed way.

"do you know that you have never been with me in the fields or the woods since we were engaged?"
"you feel more at home with me in a room"
"never in the real countyside"
"I connect you with a view, a certain type of view"
" why should you connect me with a room?"
"a drawing room pray? With no view?"
"yes, with no view."
"I'd rather...that you connected me with the open ai."

"she reminded him of some briliant flower that has no leaves of it's own, but blooms abruptly out of world of green"

When Cecil thinks about how the kiss should have been he imagines that "Lucy was standing flower like by the water; he rushed up to her in his arms" this is similar to the kiss with George.
The way that Lucy mentions George after the kiss shows that the kiss had brought back memories of George and shown Lucy how different the two men are.

Chapter 12
"only a pond...the waters had flooded te surrounding grass, which showed like a beautiful emerald path"
"tha evening and that night the water ran away. On the morrow the pool had shrunk to its old size and lost it's glory"

" water, sky, evergreens, a wind - these things not even the seasons can touch, and surely they lie beyond the intrusion of man."

"he regarded himself as he dressed. Barefoot, bare chested, radiant and personable against the shadowy woods" - this is the first time that we see George truly happy and it is because he has just emerged himself in nature and freedom.

Chapter 14
"from far, from eve and morning,
And you twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither: here am I."

"You love George! And after this lomg preamble the three words burst against Lucy, like waves fro. The open sea."
"how dare you! Gasped Lucy, with the roaring of waters In her ears"
"that love is of the body; not the body, but of the body"

"the song died away; they heard the river, besting down the snows of winter into the mediterranean" cold to warm

Sticking to social class and culture
Chapter 4
"the desire for education and social advancement - in this there is something not wholly vile."

Lucy views Charlotte with "admirable delicacy"

"She recalled the free, pleasant life of her home, where she was allowed to do anything where nothing ever happened to her."

Chapter 5
But she had a feeling that Charlotte and her shopping were preferable to george Emerson."

Chapter 6
The way that mr eager speaks Italian means that he ruins the melodius Tongue so that "it resembled nothing so much as an acid whisteling fountain which played higher and higher."

Chapter 10
" but in italy, where anyone who chides may warm himself in equality, as in the sun, this conception of life vanished."
"she felt there was no one whom she might not get to like, that social barriers were irremovable, doubtless, not particularly high. You could jump over them..."

Passion and love
Chapter 5
"The well-known world had broken up, and there emerged Florence, a magical city where people though and did the most extraordinary things. Was there more in her Frank beauty than me the eye - the power to evoke passions, good and bad, and to bring them speedily to a fulfilment?"

Chapter 6
Once again Forster uses symbolism from mythology; Phaeton - in Greek mythology is the god who stole apollos chariot and caused a huge fire as he lost control of the chariot that pulled the sun therefore he symbolises fire, passion and excitement.
Phaeton has bought a lover with him however he pretends as if she is his sister. The lover is called Persephone she is even referred to as a "goddess". In mythology Persephone is cursed to live in the under world for half the year and is only at allowed out at the beginning of spring. She therefore represents the appreciation of nature and beauty and life. "the goddess was allowed to mount beside the god" The fact that mr eager separates the couple shows his disapproval of passion and the true meaning of nature. Mr Emerson on the other hand dexlared that "the lover on no account should be separated" "if we part them it's more like sacrilege than anything I know"

"courage...courage and love"contrasts with eaters "courage and faith"

Chapter 9
"such romance I have is that of the inglese Italiano"

"passion should believe itself irrestible" "it should forget civility and consideration and other uses of a refined nature"

The kiss is described as a "salutation"

Chapter 12
"it is fate. Everything is fate. We are flung together by Fate - flung together drawn apart . The twelve winds blow us - we settle nothing" - nature controls.

Chapter 13
"miss Bartlett, in deed, though not in word had taight the girl that this our life contains nothing satisfactory" she applied "this to her lover"

Chapter 14
"love felt and returned, love which our bodies exact and our hearts have transfigured, love which is the most real thing that we shall ever meet, reappeared now as the worlds enemy, and she must stifle it"

"but I met you again when all the world is glorious water and sun. As you came through the wood I saw that nothing else mattered. I called. I wante to live and have my chance of joy."

" when love comes, that is reality" "passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity,mandate the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand."

Mr emerson "differed from mr beebe chiefly by his acknowledgement of passion"

"now it is all dark. Now beauty and passion seem never to have existed. I know. But remember the mountains ore florence and the view"

"youth enwrapped them; the song of Phaeton then announced passion required, love attained. But they were conscious of a love more mysterious than this"

Being a contained woman
Chapter 6

" in an on manner he had shown that he wished to continue their intimacy. She had refused, not because she disliked him, but because she did not know what had happened, and suspected that he did know. And that frightened her. "

"it is defeat you have separated to people who were happy"

"Lucy had a spasm of envy"'at the two lovers being openly loving towards each other.

"she only felt at ease among those to whom she felt indifferent"

Chapter 7
"real menace belongs to the drawing room"

Chater 9
"Cecil laughed at her feminine inconsequence"

" her brow was wrinkled and she still looked furiously cross - the result, he concluded, of too many moral gymnastics."

"the very afternoon that Lucy had been acquired by him"

"he was delighted by her admirable simplicity"

"she shook off the subject as to difficult for a girl"

"for he believed that woman rever men for their manliness"

Chapter 10
"for Italy was offering her the most priceless of all possessions - her Own soul"

"Cecil was absent-one did not play bumble puppy when he was there"

Chapter 11
"at last she longed for attention, as a woman should, and looked up to him because he was a man"

Chapter 12
"and yet you will tell me that the sexes are equal"
"I tell you they will be"-mr Emerson
"we shall enter it when we no longer despise our bodies"
"we despise the body less than women do"
"in this" (not despising our bodies) not in other things - we men are ahead. We despise the body less than women do. But not until we are comrades (equal) shall we enter the garden."

"this desire to govern a woman -it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together before they enter the garden"
"every moment of his life he's forming you, telling you what's charming or amusing or ladylike."

"commanded cecil' who always felt he must lead a woman"

Chapter 13
"nothing roused miss honeychurch so much as litrature in the hands of females" "if books must be written let them be written by men" women are supposed to be "mounding their house and their children."

Chapter 14
"charm not argument was to be her forte."

"love felt and returned, love which our bodies exact and our hearts have transfigured, love which is the most real thing that we shall ever meet, reappeared now as the worlds enemy, and she must stifle it"

Chapter 17


Superficiality
Chapter 6
"the narrowness and superficiality of the Anglo Saxon tourist is nothing less than a menace"

"in the very height of their emotion they knew it to be unmanky or unladylike."

Chapter 9
"a clergymen that does have fences, and the most dreadful ones, is mr eager ... He was truly insincere .... He was a snob, and somconceited and he did say te most unkind things"

"he longed to hint to her that not here lay her vocation; that a womans power and charm reside in mystery, not in muscular rant . But possibly rant is a sign of vitality: it mars the beautiful creature, but shows she is alive. After a moment, he contemplated her flushed face and excited gestures with. Certain approval. He fore bore to repress the sources of youth"

Chapter 13
"She had never imagined one who would be happy and greet her with the shout of the morning star."

Chapter 14
"charm not argument was to be her forte."

"every moment of his life he's forming you, telling you what's charming or amusing or ladylike."

Truth
Chapter 6

"he pressed his fingertips to his forehead and then pushed them towards her as if oozing with visible extract of knowledge."
- Italians know real knowledge, not unimportant academia.

"Italians are born knowing the way."

Chapter 7
"I want to be truthful,' she whispered 'it is so hard to be truthful."

Chapter 9
"lucy was slow to follow what people said, but quick enough to detect what they meant"

Chapter 13
"there were too many ghosts about. The original ghost - that touch of her lips on her cheek- has surely been laid long ago; it could be nothing to her that a man had kissed her on a mountain once. "
"how would she fight against ghosts? For a moment the visible world faded and memories and emotions alone seemed real."

Chapter 14
" when love comes, that is reality" "passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity,mandate the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand."

Chapter 19
"yes, for we fight for more than love or pleasure: there is Truth. Truth counts, Truth does count."

Naivety
Chapter 10
"life so far as she troubled to conceive it, was a circle of rich, pleasant people, with identical interests and identical foes"

Chapter 14
"every moment of his life he's forming you, telling you what's charming or amusing or ladylike."


Beauty and delicacy
"no he is not tactful, yet, have you ever noticed that there are people who don things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time - beautiful?"

"beautiful? Are not beauty and delicacy the same thing?"

"so one would have thought,' said the other helplessly 'but things are so difficult, I sometimes think."

Chapter 10
"they found the whole room a mass of blue- vases and jugs"
"so ungentlemanly and yet so beautiful"
"a goodly, if not good young man"

Chapter 13
"he is easily upset by ugly things" this leads to him appearing to be uncivil and rude

"so the grittiness went out of life. It generally did at windy corner."

Chapter 14
"but once in the open air, she paused. Some emotion - pity, terror, love, but the emotion was strong-seized her. She was aware of autumn!"

Spontaneity
The way that the emersons offer their rooms to them without any preamble

Chapter 6
"the ground sloped sharply into the view, and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems... The primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth"

"he contemplated her, as one whonhad fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy In her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in waves"

"he stepped quickly forward and kissed her"

"miss bartlett stood brown against the view"

Chapter 7
"all her sensations, her spasms of courage, her moments of unreasonable joy, her mysterious discontent, should be carefully laid beforeher cousin."
- her feelings and thoughts which are personal must me analysed by her cousin.

"persephone who spends half her life in the grave - she could reflect it also. Not so these English. They gain knowledge slowly' and perhaps too late."

Chapter 9
"he became self-conscious and kept glancing around to see if they were observed"
"she gave such a businesslike lift to her veil"
"may I now?" "he was conscious of nothing but absurdities" "he found time to wish that he could recoil"
"as he touched her, his gold pince-nez became dislodged and was flattened between them."

"it had been a failure. Pssion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all other curses of a refined nature."

Chapter 10
"in this circle one thought, married and died.

Chapter 12
"it is fate. Everything is fate. We are flung together by Fate - flung together drawn apart . The twelve winds blow us - we settle nothing" - nature controls.

"they forgot Italy and botany and fate. They began to play"

Chapter 13
How often had Lucy rehearsed this bow, this interview! But she had always rehearsed then indoors, and with a certain amount of accessories"

" she reflected that it is...impossible to rehearse life"

"all our carefully planned gestures mean nothing, or mean too much." - like gatsby

Chapter 14
"every moment of his life he's forming you, telling you what's charming or amusing or ladylike."

Propriety
Chapter 7
" a shamefaced world of precautions and barriers which may avert evil, but which do not seem to bring out good, if we judge from those who have used them most."
- people with most propriety are normally the people who are the least happy ie miss Bartlett

Chapter 9
"it makes a difference, doesn't it, whether we fence ourselves in or whether er are fenced out by barriers of others"

"now, a clergyman that I do hate...a clergyman that does have fences, and the most dreadful ones, is mr eager" she describes him as conceited and insincere.

"I tell you who has no fences as you call them and that Is mr beebe"

chapter 10
"a woman who desired, not a wider dwelling room, but equality beside the man she loved"

Chapter 12
"attempting the tense yet nonchalant expression that is suitable for ladies on such an occasion" - when they are confronted with such joy and freedom they are expected to repress any happy emotions they get from it

Chapter 14
"but as the week wore on, more of her defences fell and she entertained an image that had physical beauty."

Chapter 17
She "joined the vast armies of the benightedm who follow neither the heart nor the brain, and march to their destiny by catchwords. The armies are full of pleasant and pious folk. But they have yielded to the only enemy that matters-the enemy within. They have sinned against passion and truth, and vain will be their strife after virtue. As the years pass, they are censured. Their pleasantry and their piety shows cracks, their eit becomes cynicism, their unsefishness hypocrisy; they feel and produce discomfort everywhere they go."
"Lucy entered this army when she pretended to George that she did not love him"

Apprieciating art for what it truly is
Chapter
Capter 9 is called "Lucy as a work of art"

Chapter 10
"no, you dont' she snapped 'you don't know what the word means.' he stared at her,and felt that she had failed to be leonardoesque"

Chapter 12
"the three gentlemen rotated in the pool breast high, after the fashion of the nymphs I. Götterdämmerung."

Chapter 14
"for the first time since they ere engaged. From a Leonardo she had become a living woman, with mysteries and forces of her own, with qualities that even eluded art"

"you may understand beautiful things, but dont know how to use them; and you wrap yourself up in art and books and music, and would try to wrap up me. I wont be stifled, not by the most glorious music, for people are glorious, and you hide them from me."

"in January he would rescue his Leonardo from this stupefying twaddle"

Academia
Chapter 14
"is it that love and youth matter intellectually. "

"you may understand beautiful things, but dont know how to use them; and you wrap yourself up in art and books and music, and would try to wrap up me. I wont be stifled, not by the most glorious music, for people are glorious, and you hide them from me."

" a volume of old testament commentaries. Holding it up to her eyes, she said: I have no wish to discuss Italy or any other subject connected with your son."


Sunday 5 September 2010

historyy

How far do these sources support the view that Labour’s landslide election victory of 1945 “could have been predicted long in advance”? 


The massive landslide victory of the Labour Government may have been seen as a great shock to many people in Britain because the hugely popular Prime Minister, Churchill, had just successfully led Britain through the War. However when we consider the public mood at the time of the election, just after the war had ended we can understand why they might favour a Labour Government.

Source 2 states that “the voters wanted an end to wartime austerity” as they had endured WW2 for 6 years, a war that had a much greater affect on civilian life than the previous world war. They no longer felt the need to have a Prime Minister whose main objective was to win battles. Churchill wanted to continue fighting until Japan was defeated, as mentioned in source 2, however the Labour government could see that the British public were weary with the war. Therefore I believe that source 2 suggests that the victory could have been predicted sooner because Labour knew what the public wanted whereas Churchill was still trying to convince the British to fight the Japanese. 

Furthermore the public were not just tired with the war, but they felt as if they needed some form of reward. This meant that when the Beveridge Report was announced in 1942, introducing a welfare system, votes for labour increased and they secured a 10 percent lead in 1943 as described in source 1. This supports the statistics shown in source 3 which states that 100,000 copies of the reports were sold. People wanted to benefit from a National Health Service, housing, employment and a nationalisation of industry and, according to source 2 they didn’t trust Churchill “to deliver the brave new world of Beveridge”. The fact that Churchill did not grasp the opportunity to use the Beveridge Reports was a big mistake and I believe that it was an early indicator that the Conservatives were going to fall out of favour. 

Not only did Churchill not use the Beveridge Reports, but he considered them as a distraction. In the Conservative manifesto of 1945 Churchill insists that people should not be dependent on a “state machine” and that they should “preserve that spirit of independence”. The fact that 100,000 copies of the Beveridge Reports were sold ought to have alerted Churchill in advance to the fact that, after so much strife, the British public wanted to be able to have more dependancy on the government and may shift their support to secure the welfare state they deserved.

Another reason for why people voted Labour, which could have been anticipated earlier, was that naturally after so many years of war people wanted some control over their lives. They wanted to even out the relationship between the people and the government. The Beveridge reports introduced this new relationship. Source 3 says that the new social reform would be achieved by “co-operation between the State and the individual”, therefore I believe that source 3 strongly supports the view that the landslide could have been foreseen earlier.

On the other hand I can understand why the landslide was so unexpected; Churchill is one of the most popular British leaders and people believed that nobody else could have been a “national leader with greater success than Churchill”, therefore he seemed a more obvious choice for the role of getting the country back on its feet, having saved the country from invasion. This is suggested by source 5 which says that Churchill’s policies “have been tested anew in the fires of war”. This showed confidence in their policies which according to the conservatives  were tried and tested; a strong contrast from the the Labour manifesto which was all about change, “modernisation and re-equipment” as mentioned in source 4. 

Moreover the election of Atlee came as a surprise because in a poll in 1945, Churchill’s approval rate was 83% what’s more source 1 suggests that Churchill was“unbeatable-as David Lloyd George” who had been the Prime Minister during the first world war. Therefore source 1 disagrees with the idea that the landslide could have been predicted. However source 4 challenges the idea that people would want to keep the same leader because Labour believed that the nation needed “a tremendous overhaul”.  

Overall I believe that the sources do strongly suggest that the landslide could have been predicted a long time in advance because as soon as the war was over in 1939 people were desperate for the sort of change described in the Labour manifesto (source 4). Although Churchill led the British through the war and is considered as one of the “greatest englishman of all time”, he would not offer the public opportunities like the ones offered in the Beveridge Reports in 1942 which would transform the country. 


800 words

Tuesday 5 January 2010

Monday 21 September 2009

more computer saving what a bore

Describe the ways in which the methods of the Suffragists and Suffragettes were different


Although by 1905 women had a lot more rights, they were still being denied the right to vote. Women had been campaigning within the NUWSS for many years and were getting frustrated by their peaceful methods. Therefore, they broke away and formed the WSPU which used more militant action to get attention. The names Suffragists (for the peaceful protesters) and Suffragettes (for the more violent) were coined for them. 

Suffragists used more organized methods, than the Suffragettes, to get support and their message heard, such as letter writing. The NUWSS brought together 500 local organizations with more than 50,000 members, arranged over 1300 meeting in 1877-78 alone and in 1894 they produced a petition with 250,000 signatures on it. In 1908 the Suffragists followed the Suffragettes idea of planning a huge demonstration of 13, 000 women through Central London, dressed up as powerful women figures such as Boadicca and Queen Elizabeth.

Their slogan was ‘Voiceless London’ which meant that half of London didn’t have the vote. This made people (a lot of them men) sympathetic. Their posters were well planned. One of them shows that convicts, lunatics and drunkards were able to keep their right to vote, whilst women could be mothers and nurses and still not  be able to vote. This shows they were trying to prove that they deserved the vote, which is where the main difference was between themselves and the Suffragists. They got angry by the Suffragists who were working against the Liberals who were trying to help them, as shown in the illustration by Bernard Partridge.

  The Suffragettes first formed because they could see that working along side the law peacefully wasn’t getting them very far. They believed that they would only be taken seriously if they got attention, so they caused disturbances outside Parliament which led to them being arrested and taken to Holloway Prison, where they were treated like criminals. They could use this to their advantage as propaganda. They could see it annoyed the government because they were showing how women were treated like criminals for trying to get their voices heard. 

They did processions such as the major one in 190, with half a million people involved through Hyde Park, in order to raise awareness. They also planned demonstrations outside the Houses of Parliament which could often turn into fights between them and the police, such as the first major one in 1907. They did this demonstration because they were angry that the Liberals had withdrawn their support for the cause meaning the bill didn’t pass because Suffragettes were against more men getting the vote, which was the Liberals main policy. 

The Suffragettes would do anything to get their voices heard by politicians and even the King. They would attack and heckle members of Parliament who were against women’s suffrage, tie themselves to the railings outside 10 Downing street, lock themselves in people cars, run into 10 Downing Street, stamp slogans over parliament walls. They even tried to present a petition to King Edward V11 as he passed through London in a carriage at the same time as dropping thousands of leaflets over London by a hot air balloon. Often they would get arrested for these actions but would not promise good behaviour while inside. 

By 1908 their actions became more violent. They adopted stone throwing through government building windows. They also threw slate through the glass roof of the building where the new priminister, Herbert Asquith, was speaking. They did this because the former priminister had been in favour of votes for women but Asquith was not interested in it. 

Hundreds of women were imprisoned over the years and in 1909 they began a new tactic which was to go on a hunger strike to shorten their stays. This led to force feeding through there mouth or even nose, which caused more propaganda posters. These were very effective and the government stopped and made the temporary discharge bill meaning the women could be re captured if they didn’t comply with the rules. All of this had put the government in a hard position and so the Suffragettes hoped that they would give in soon. It also proved that unless women were connected to important men they were treated badly, like criminals.

Around 1911, the Suffragettes began to get even more aggressive; setting fire to letterboxes, buildings, smashing shop windows and exploding buildings. These tactics were probably not very effective as the government would be seen to giving into terrorism if they gave them the vote. They also lost supporters. People began to ask how they could hand over a lot of control to people who were breaking all the laws of the country. 

It is hard to know whether the suffragettes or suffragists actions progressed votes for women the most. The suffragists didn’t care how long it took to get the vote so long as they worked with the law. The Suffragettes were everything the the suffragettes weren’t, irresponsible, aggressive, adventurous, law breaking and impetuous. However I think that they way the Suffragettes used propaganda was the main reason that votes for women happened because without it, people wouldn’t have been interested. However, it would’ve happened if they had not progressed into terrorism or set themselves against the Liberal Party.

Saturday 19 September 2009

saving it here because my computer is full...

Describe the ways in which the methods of the Suffragists and Suffragettes were different


Although by 1905 women had a lot more rights they were still being denied the right to vote. Women had been campaigning within the National Union of Women’ Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) for many years and were getting frustrated by their peaceful methods. Therefore, they broke away and formed the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) which used more militant action to get attention. The names Suffragists (for the peaceful protesters) and Suffragettes (for the more violent) were coined for them. 

Suffragists used more organised methods, than the suffragettes, to get support and their message heard. The NUWSS brought together 500 local organisations with more than 50,000 members, arranged over 1300 meeting in 1877-78 alone and in 1894 they produced a petition with 250,000 signatures on it. They also wrote well thought out letters to Parliament.  In 1908 the suffragists became more active as they organised a huge demonstration of women through Central London, some dressed up as powerful women figures such as Boadicca and Queen Elizabeth 1. 13 000 women attended. They did this because they could see how effectively it had worked for the suffragettes to begin with. 

Their slogan was ‘Voiceless London’ which meant that half of London didn’t have a say in how their county was run. This slogan made more people disposed to feel sympathetic towards their cause which meant they had more male members than the suffragettes. 

There posters were well planned. One of them shows that convicts, lunatics and drunkards were able to keep their right to vote, whilst women could be mothers, nurses and doctors and still not  be able to vote. They were trying to prove that they deserved the vote, which is where the main difference was between themselves and the suffragists. They also differed because they didn’t mind how long it took to get the result, so long as they continued to work alongside the law and they didn’t rely on propaganda in the way that the suffragettes did. They wished to work along side the law and the Liberal Party (who were supportive of them) in order to show that they deserved the vote.

There is an illustration by Bernard Partridge, showing plainly the differences of the suffragettes and suffragists called ‘The Shrieking Sister’. In the picture there is clear evidence of suffragists trying to restrain suffragettes who were trying to work against that Liberals, who were in fact trying to help the movement. It shows how the suffragist deals with the situation calmly and the Suffragette is being violent and unreasonable. 




Why did  a campaign for women’s suffrage develop in the years after 1970?


By the 1950s women had no legal existence and were not able to vote. All of their property or salary belonged to their father or husband, even their children were not rightfully theirs. Women were classed along side children and slaves as natural dependents on men. The main role of a woman was to marry a suitable husband, produce a large family and to concentrate on domestic life, unless they had to find work. A minority of women were not content with sitting at home all day embroidering and flower arranging, they became known as the Suffragists (peaceful protesters) or Suffragettes (more forceful) and they asked for women’s suffrage and rights. There were a number of reasons why the campaign for women’s suffrage developed in the years after 1970, the main one’s being political, economic and social. 

The 1st economic reason that helped to develop women’s suffrage was that before 1870 all her possessions, injury compensation, salary and will was her husbands. However in 1870 and 1882 the Married Women’s Property Acts were passed meaning that while a women was still living with her husband she could keep her earnings and property. Laws that benefited women continued to gather momentum because in 1886 the Married Women (Maintenance in case of desertion) Act was passed meaning that a women would not be left with nothing if her husband left her and he would have to pay her money. These new rights and equalities encouraged them to believe that they would be able to vote in the future. 

The second key point that was economic was that women began to get jobs, even though it was being made increasingly harder to get into university. Previous to this they only had careers on the stage or as governess’. However in 1865 Elizabeth Garret Anderson became the first qualified women doctor in England and established a women’s school for medicine. Emily Faithful was a publisher and printer of books. These women were good examples to other women who wanted more from life. More women were getting involved and it gave them an opportunity to show that they were smart and capable and deserved the vote.

I think that the main social reason that developed women’s suffrage was the Education Act in 1870. It meant that it was compulsory for all children between the ages of five and twelve to be educated. It was also a political reason because more people had just become able to vote and so they needed to be taught how to vote wisely. It meant that women were beginning to be treated more like equals and they could show that they were just as clever as men. 

In 1900 there was a war going on, and so in the general elections, while husbands were away, there are two examples of women voting for their husbands. Only 7 million out of a population of 42 million were able to vote and all but these two were men. This proved that women had the mental capacity to address people in public and make well argued points. 

One person who was completely against women’s suffrage was Queen Victoria, she believed they were poor and feeble, this encouraged men to believe it. However she died before women were given suffrage and her attitude made women more determined. 

It was common for women to produce up to seven children during their lifetimes at great personal risk. However she could not own one of them up until the 1886 Guardianship of Infants Act came into place, meaning that a mother became a legal parent of her children if their father died. This showed again that women were getting more rights and so it was more probable that they could have the right to vote.

Men such as the novelist Henry Fielding and the Artist J.W Waterhouse believed that it was morally correct for women to vote. Fielding vilified bad husbands and Waterhouse’s painting of the Lady of Shallot has many symbols regarding the campaign. This shows that women were getting more of a say in how a relationship was dictated, men were supportive, they were being treated more like equals and it encouraged them to believe they would be given the vote. 

The main political reason was that women in New Zealand were able to vote in 1893. Women in Britain would want to emulate them especially as New Zealand was part of the British empire. It gave the idea to women to get involved and that it was possible to happen. Another key reason was that around 1870s - 90s women were able to vote in Local councils and school boards, however they were not able to be elected. Women were getting a say in decisions and they were showing they had the capacity to make well informed decisions. 

In 1894 there was a petition for votes for women with 250,000 signatures on it.  In 1897 the House of Commons voted in favour for votes for women however the bill got no further, in fact by 1914 they had put forward over 50 bills for women rights. Even though the laws were not being passed it gave women more hope and determination because they were being taken seriously by the men who mattered. 

I believe that the most important reasons that contributed to women getting the vote were the increasing amounts of laws passed that made women more equal with men, such as being able to own their own property and earn a living. I also believe that giving young girls education was important in equalizing the sexes as men could realize that women were really able to decide how the country was run and they were just as clever and deserved the right to vote.

Friday 28 August 2009