III.

Women in the Edwardian era

Annie Besant
(1847-1933)
Marie Stopes (1880-1958)
Edward Linley
Sambourne
1844-1910
Edward Linley
Sambourne
1844-1910
Edward Linley
Sambourne
1844-1910
• Women : school boards, rural district councils &
poor house councils, boards of guardians (poor
law)
• Suffrage at local elections:
1869 single women with property
1894 married women with property

=> 1900s: still no voting rights at national level,

despite efforts by suffragists
• 1884 representation of the People Act
• 1900s: 40% men can’t vote
• restrictive gender ideology
• 1908: National Anti-Suffrage League est. by Mrs
Humphry Ward
 Millicent Fawcett
(1847 – 1929)

1897: National Union

of Women’s Suffrage
Societies (NUWSS)
Emmeline Pankhurst
(1858-1928)
Christabel Sylvia Adela

1903: Women’s Social

and Political Union (WSPU)
 Rosa May
Billinghurst
(1875-1953)
Emily Davison (1872-1913)
Rokeby Venus (1647-1651), Diego Velázquez
Mary Richardson
(1882-1961)
Mary Leigh
(1885-1975)
Lilian Lenton
(1891-1972)
Millicent Fawcett
(1847 – 1929)

1897: National Union

of Women’s Suffrage
Societies (NUWSS)
“The National Union adopted a different election policy: that of
obtaining declarations of opinion from all candidates at each
election and supporting the man, independent of party, who gave
the most satisfactory assurances of support. In the view of the
National Union this policy was infinitely more adapted to the facts
of the situation than that adopted by the militants. What was
desired was that the electorate should be educated in the principles
of women's suffrage, and made to understand what women wanted,
and why they wanted it; and electors were much more likely to
approach the subject in a reasonable frame of mind if they had not
been thrown into a violent rage by what they considered an unfair
attack upon their own party.”

Millicent Fawcett, Women’s Suffrage: a Short History of a Great

Movement, 1911.
Christabel Sylvia Adela

1903: Women’s Social

and Political Union (WSPU)
 “The White
Feather: A
Sketch of
English
Recruiting”,
Collier’s Weekly
(1914)
Sylvia Pankhurst (1882-1960) Haile Selassie (1892-1975)
• 1918
Representation
of the People
Act
• 1928 Equal
Franchise Act
• name a woman in (not mentioned during the
lecture) who had an impact on British society in
the 20th century and explain why.
Women in the Edwardian era:

• smaller families
• slightly more open discussion of reproductive &
sexual rights
• Struggle for the suffrage:
- suffragists & suffragettes
- 1918 vote = fruit of a long struggle started in
the Victorian era
IV. Edwardian culture
2. Religion

• Church attendance in decline

• still a Christian society
3. Leisure & Popular Culture

• 1863 British football association

• car rallies, motorbike races, flying contests
• 1908 London Olympics
• gambling
3. Leisure & Popular Culture

• golf, tennis, rugby: middle-class

• indicator of class / gender
3. Leisure & Popular Culture

• the pub(lic house)

• music hall
Marie Lloyd
(1870-1922)
Marie Lloyd: Queen of The Music Hall, BBC, 2007.
3. Leisure & Popular Culture

• 1st real cinema in the world: Colne (Lancashire),

1907
• 1881-1911: number of actors x4
• cheap form of entertainment
Charlie Chaplin
(1889-1977)
3. Leisure & Popular Culture

• Modernism: George Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats,

James Joyce...
• Rudyard Kipling
• H.G. Wells: science fiction
• Algernon Blackwood: horror, ghost, “weird”
fiction
• Lord Dunsany: fantasy
• Writers of romance
• 1908: Boy Scout movement founded by Robert Baden-Powell
• martial, imperialist ideology
• …of just plain outdoors fun?
Edwardian culture:

• the birth of modern popular culture