You Daughters of Freedom by Clare Wright

In my last blog, I looked at the question of the British press’s “boycott” of the suffragette movement. The piece was prompted by my reading of Clare Wright’s You Daughters of Freedom: The Australians who won the vote and inspired the world (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2018). So in this blog, I’d like to share some of my thoughts about the book.

Overall, I very much enjoyed this book. The author’s style is direct, even forthright – you are never in any doubt about where she stands on any of the issues raised! It was fascinating to read about the suffrage campaign from an international and colonial perspective. In addition, I particularly liked the biographical approach which focussed on the stories of individual women such as Nellie Martel, Dora Montefiore, Muriel Mattters and Vida Goldstein.

WSPU Leaders c 1906-7. Left to right: Flora Drummond, Christabel Pankhurst, Jessie Kenney, Nellie Martel, Emmeline Pankhurst, Charlotte Despard.

At times, though, I thought the prose a bit over the top and prone to exaggeration – Vida Goldstein “was the dawn”, “Dora had the opportunity to march in the front line of history. Literally.”, “the core of the metropole was red hot, molten bullshit”, “The world” watches the British suffrage movement, “The new wave of Australasian progressivism had come crashing on to the old world’s crumbling shores”.

There’s also the question of the “press boycott ruling out mainstream media coverage.” The claim is repeated with the same aggrieved air as the WSPU’s own complaints that the British press refused to report on their activities. However, the fact that it suited the WSPU at other times to boast that thanks to them there no longer was a boycott does suggest that it isn’t always a good idea to take the WSPU’s propaganda at face value. (As mentioned above, I considered the question of the press boycott in my last blog, The Suffragettes and the Press Boycott.)

Muriel Matters

Sometimes, too, I couldn’t help feeling that the tendency to exaggeration resulted in the replacement of one overarching myth of the British suffrage movement – that it was all down to the Pankhursts – by another – that it was all down to the Australian women.

Yet the fact that the book raised these issues and gave me much to think about is a measure of how much I enjoyed it. It opened up new perspectives; revealed some shocking facts, chief of which was the White Australia policy; and told the stories of women whose lives deserve greater attention than they have previously received. And I could never accuse You Daughters of Freedom of being boring! All in all it’s a great read.

Picture Credits

WSPU Leaders and Muriel Matters: Women's Library on Flickr, No Known Copyright Restrictions

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My blog has moved to https://lucienneboyce.com/blog/

My blog has moved to my new website and is now at https://lucienneboyce.com/blog/ I'm no longer posting blogs on this site, but you can still read the old blogs on this site, or you can find them at the new location.

From Hogarth to Rowlandson: Medicine in Art in Eighteenth Century Britain, Fiona Haslam, (Liverpool University Press, 1996)

I’m often asked about how I go about doing the research for my historical novels. One of the sources I usually mention is visual art. I’ve always found that looking at contemporary paintings, prints, sketches, sculpture and so on reveals a wealth of information about how people of the past lived – what they wore, what sort of houses they lived in, how they spent their time, the towns and villages they inhabited. Going to an art gallery is one of my favourite research trips – especially if there’s a decent café with tea and cake at the end of an afternoon’s study! Of course, you don’t always have to take artistic representations literally. It’s obvious that whatever you’re looking at is an interpretation of the reality: it’s how the artist saw it. In fact, this subjectivity can be a real advantage if you’re looking for ideas about how people lived and thought. Often the most exaggerated representations, such as satirical prints or caricature, are the most revealing, telling us thi...

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