In
all the commemorations around the one hundredth anniversary of votes for (some)
women, it’s easy to forget that there were many women who didn’t want the vote.
In 1908 a
National Women’s Anti-Suffrage League was formed. It later combined with the
Men’s League to form the National League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage. One of
the leaders of the anti suffrage movement was best-selling novelist Mrs Humphry
Ward (1851-1920).
Amongst
my collection of suffrage books are signed copies of two of Mrs Humphry Ward’s works. The
first is England’s Effort: Six Letters to an American Friend
(1916) written
to encourage America to join the war. The other is the 1910 novel Lady Merton, Colonist, inside which is a
copy of the order of service for Mrs Humphry Ward’s funeral.
Mrs
Humphry Ward made her anti-suffrage views known not only through her public
speaking but through her novels. In 1915 she published an anti-suffrage novel, Delia Blanchflower, which tells the
story of the eponymous heroine and her friendship with a very unpleasant
militant suffragette, Gertrude Marvell.
Mrs
Humphry Ward was convinced that the majority of English women did not want the
vote. Her evidence
for this was that only 3% of women had joined any suffrage society at all,
although it’s not clear where she got the figure from. By contrast, she said,
the Anti-Suffrage League had managed to gather 320,000 signatures on an
anti-suffrage petition sent to Parliament in 1909.
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| Mrs Ward's signature in England's Effort |
Pro-suffrage
campaigners had often to deal with the argument that women simply did not want
to be enfranchised. In a meeting on the Downs in Bristol in 1910, suffragette
Dr Helena Jones, who was a medical inspector of schools, was interrupted during
her speech by a man who reminded her that women did not want the vote. She
replied, “It did not matter whether they wanted the vote, but it did matter if
they needed it”. She added that this was exactly the stance taken by Gladstone
when he extended the vote to agricultural labourers and was told they did not
want it. His reply, Dr Jones said, was “that is all the more reason for giving
him the vote”.
Anti
suffragists fell broadly into two camps: those who believed that women were
completely incapable of wielding political power of any kind, and those who,
like Mrs Humphry Ward, thought that
women did have a role to play in public life – but in local, not national,
government. On the whole, most of those in the “women are incapable” camp were
men.
Mrs Humphry Ward was not
prepared to argue for the total incapacity of her sex. Indeed, she was a very
capable woman who campaigned for the extension of further education opportunities
for women, as well as better education for disabled children. By 1907 women had
won the right to vote and stand for election on parish, rural district, urban
district and county councils. It was in these areas that Mrs Humphry Ward thought
women should apply themselves since issues such as education and poor law provision
were natural extensions of women’s domestic role.
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| A signed copy of Lady Merton, Colonist |
On
the other hand, Mrs Humphry Ward thought that national government was men’s
business: “In the field of local government…women are in their right, and the
nation has given them powers of which they have scarcely as yet used a
fraction…What we want now…is a strong local government movement among women,
wholly dissociated from the franchise movement and opposed to it. Women’s local
government societies of this kind are now beginning to spring up. The more widely
they can be diffused…the more plainly [women] will they see that in a wise
renouncement lies their strength, that in leaving to men the work and the
responsibilities which are rightfully and specially theirs, they are not
curtailing but strengthening their own influence with the nation.”
Unfortunately,
Mrs Humphrey Ward contradicted her own argument by involving herself in
national politics (as did many other women). During the election in January
1910 she campaigned for her son, Arnold, when he stood for election. The WSPU
newspaper, Votes for Women, commented, “Mrs Humphrey Ward, who thinks
that other women are not sufficiently intelligent to exercise the vote, has
been writing letters on behalf of her son, instructing the electors of his
would-be constituency. He was defeated.”
For
all that her anti-suffrage views aren’t likely to win much sympathy nowadays, I
think it’s a pity if Mrs Humphry Ward’s achievements are forgotten. And while
it’s true that some of her novels aren’t much to modern taste – Delia Blanchflower ends with Delia
seeing the error of her ways, marrying and looking forward to having lots of
babies with a husband whose “tenderness will be the master-light of all her
days” – I think she is sadly under-rated as a novelist. Her 1888 novel Robert Elsmere, which explores the
contemporary crisis of religious faith, was a ground-breaking book which
challenged religious dogma.
So
I’m pleased to own my two little bits of anti-suffrage history!
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| The order of funeral service tucked inside Lady Merton, Colonist |
You
can find out more about the life of Mrs Humphry Ward in the Spotlight OnArchive (opens as pdf document).
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