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Freedom OR Death PEC NOTA: 10

Mundos Anglófonos en Perspectiva Histórica y Cultural (UNED)

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Freedom or Death
Emmeline Pankhurst

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Commentary
The speech “Freedom or Death” was given by Emmeline Pankhurst on the 13th
of November in 1913, when she was on tour in the United States of America.
Specifically, the speech took place in the capital city of Hartford, Connecticut. It
is an important detail since Hartford is near Boston, where the Boston Tea Party
took place.

In 1913 women’s right to vote had not been obtained in any place in the world
yet, but gradually several countries such as England and the USA were
experimenting the appearance of illustrated, feminist and educated women that
pushed the patriarchal society intending to earn the right to vote and have a
voice in the parliament. At that time in England, the government have just
passed a legislation called the “Cat and Mouse Act”, trying to suffocate the
women’ riots.

Emmeline Pankhurst was a British political activist, born in Manchester in 1858.

She was probably politically influenced by her parents. Her father took part in
campaigns against slavery and her mother used to take Emmeline to feminists
meetings when she was very young. In 1879 she married Richard Pankhurst, a
socialist and a defender of women’s suffrage. With him, she founded in 1889
the Women’s Franchise League, in order to secure the women’s vote in local
elections. She became a widow in 1898 and continued her political activities,
founding in 1903 the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903.

Her and WSPU actions took women to prison several times. They went on
hunger strikes until being almost dead, which resulted in violent force-feeding
and the “Cat and Mouse” act, in which the starving women prisoners would be
released until be recovered and then imprisoned again.

The fact that “Freedom or death” was pronounced in Hartford adds an important
symbolic nuance to the entire speech. In one hand, the person who introduced
Ms Pankhust to the audience was Katharine Hepburn, then the president of the
Connecticut Woman Suffrage Movement (CWSM) and a similar preeminent
feminist figure just like herself. In the other hand, Boston and the state of

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Connecticut was a key place to the American Independence Revolution against

the English crown, and Emmeline uses several parallelisms with the Boston Tea
Party, a political protest in which shipments of tea were thrown into the sea.

The speech is titled “Freedom or Death”, which clearly creates a gap between
the position of the suffrage movement in the United States of America and the
situation in England. In the USA, the movement is treated as advocacy in which
women explain why should they have the right to vote. Ms Pankhurst opens her
text explaining to her audience why the militant action was reasonable and
justified, “what civil war is like when civil war is waged by women”. She makes
clear that she wouldn't have to explain her cause if she had been born a man
but “since I am a woman it is necessary to explain why women have adopted
revolutionary methods in order to win the rights of citizenship”.

She calls herself a soldier, and uses vocabulary concerning war and battle “I
am not only here as a soldier temporarily absent from the field at battle..”,
underling the fact that her fight is a civil war and not a bunch of hysterical
women as the media pictured them. Also, she reaffirms her authority to the
audience by explaining her situation in her country and the penalties she had
lived herself “according to the law courts of my country, it has been decided, is
of no value to the community at all; and I am adjudged because of my life to be
a dangerous person, under sentence of penal servitude in a convict prison”.
She concludes the introduction with a very powerful message “women are
human beings”.

In the following paragraphs, Emmeline interacts directly with her audience by

asking what it would happen if men in Hartford had a grievance, and the
government repeatedly ignored them. Then she refers to the recent history of
the USA when they achieved the Independence, mentioning the tea party at
Boston and making a connection between women’s situation with the vote and
the American people right to emancipate. These part of the speech makes the
American male conformed audience feel identified with the women’s cause and
makes them feel involved within the meeting.

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She makes an analogy between the women’s need to fight for her rights and
two babies: a patient baby and an impatient baby. Using this metaphor she
arguments that the only way for them to be heard is “to make more noise than
anybody else” since the impatient crying baby would be the one attended first.

Emmeline points out how men always have sacrificed women in their fights and
revolutions “When your forefathers threw the tea into Boston Harbour, a good
many women had to go without their tea. It has always seemed to me an
extraordinary thing that you did not follow it up by throwing the whiskey
overboard; you sacrificed the women; and there is a good deal of warfare for
which men take a great deal of glorification which has involved more practical
sacrifice on women than it has on any man.” After this assertion, she uses a
metaphor “but you cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs” to justify the
use of aggressive means and explains what women have been doing in
England, breaking the telegraph communication wires and proving that the limit
of their actions is decided only by them.

One of the main differences between any revolution in History and Emmeline’s
cause, as she explains, is the pattern of powerless against the powerful. They
are not in an industrial revolution, women belong to every class and it is
impossible for men to locate it.

In the following paragraphs, Emmeline takes pride and how the government
believed prison would stop women’s fight, and it only encouraged more women
to the cause. The text emphasises the courage and determination of the women
fighting for equality. “Not by the forces of civil war can you govern the very
weakest woman. You can kill that woman, but she escapes you then; you
cannot govern her. No power on earth can govern a human being, however
feeble, who withholds his or her consent.” She accentuates the women fortitude
in the hunger strikes by assuring that “there are very few men today who would
be prepared to adopt a hunger strike for any cause” and notifies the audience
about the horrible means of “feeding sane, resisting human beings by force”.

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The last paragraph is a very powerful conclusion due to the use of repetition “I
come in the intervals of prison..”, “I come after…”,“I come to ask..” and the
strong message to keep fighting until the vote is achieved.

Emmeline Pankhurst undoubtedly was an important figure for the 1st wave of
feminism. In this speech, she demonstrated her wit by choosing the right words
considering her audience and constantly using metaphoric language to
persuade and convince the American people of Hartford. She sacrificed herself
for her cause several times and she never gave up. It was a great shame that
she did not see with his own eyes the culmination of his work. I would say that
nowadays she continues to be a known and revered woman inasmuch as she
was played by the marvellous Meryl Streep in the film Suffragette(2015), being
more accessible for the contemporary audience to meet her.

In the western world, Universal suffrage was achieved almost a century ago
depending on the country, but we must not forget that there are still many
countries where women cannot even leave home if it is not in the company of a
man. We took for granted the women’s right to vote and raise their voices but at
the same time, there are many voices that are still offended when they do and
try by all means to silence them. The world had changed since Emmeline
Pankhurst fought for what now would see as a basic human right and still, we
have a long way to go until we achieved equality not only of gender but of any
aspect of the human being.

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Bibliography
 Emmeline Pankhurst. Great speeches of the 20th century: Emmeline
Pankhurst's Freedom or death. The Guardian. 27 Apr 2007. Web. 02
Dec. 2019.
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/apr/27/greatspeeches

 N.P. Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom. Wikipedia the free

encyclopedia. Last edited 3 Dec 2019. Web. 7 Dec. 2019.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_the_United_Kingd
om
 N.P. Suffragette. Wikipedia the free enciclopedia. Last edited 7 Dec
2019. Web. 7 Dec 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffragette
 Pettinger, Tejvan. “Biography Emmeline Pankhurst”, Oxford,
UK. www.biographyonline.net, 11th June 2013. Updated 8 February
2018.

 Millet, Eva. Emmeline Pankhurst y el voto femenino. La Vanguardia. 30

Aug. 2019. Web. 7 Dec. 2019.
https://www.lavanguardia.com/historiayvida/historia-
contemporanea/20190827/47310171304/emmeline-pankhurst-y-el-voto-
femenino.html

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