- 1 Amongst others: Kenney, Annie. Memories of a Militant. E. Arnold et Company, 1924; Pankhurst, E. Sy (...)
1Suffrage autobiographies became common in the 1920s and 1930s after the main objective of the campaign for women’s suffrage was achieved.1 Once the vote was won, authors wanted to offer readers and future generations their accounts of the movement and to comment on their participation. However, My Own Story by Emmeline Pankhurst and Prisons and Prisoners by Constance Lytton were two early suffragette autobiographies written and published when the outcome of the campaign was still uncertain. Constance Lytton, a well-known member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), published her autobiography in March 1914, giving an account of her growing involvement in the organisation and her imprisonments as a suffragette. Emmeline Pankhurst, founder and leader of the WSPU, finished writing her autobiography in the summer of 1914 (Pankhurst xi) and it was published in November 1914. While the suffragette organisation carried out militant action for years to obtain the vote, it stopped in August 1914 because of the war, as the WSPU wanted the government to focus on the war rather than on the suffrage campaign. Contrary to the myriad of post-suffrage movement autobiographies, the two early suffrage autobiographies which are the focus of this article were written when women had not yet achieved the vote. As such, both reconsidered the evolution of the organisation’s campaign and the work of members in order to justify their demand for the vote and their militant attempts to obtain it (Pankhurst 290).
- 2 From January to June 1913, the WSPU embarked upon increased militancy with window-smashing, bomb an (...)
2While Sylvia Pankhurst’s The Suffragette: The History of the Women’s Militant Suffrage Movement (1911) gave a historical overview of the militant organisation, these early suffrage autobiographies not only told of the history of their organisation, but were also the first to reflect on its participants’ personal involvement in the militant experience at a time when militancy had been going on for years (it reached a peak in 1913)2 but had not yet achieved the vote. Whether it was to appeal to public opinion regarding the necessity of militancy or to convince women to join the organisation’s ranks by portraying a range of heroic and sensational actions to reproduce, the WSPU had to shape, develop, and publicise a collective identity for propaganda purposes. For the WSPU, collective identity, namely the identity created by a group and shared with the members of this same group, was essentially built on arguments, notions and concepts developed in their diverse publications. Before their autobiographies were published, suffragettes’ characteristics had already been established through the frequent reproduction of militant narratives, in their newspapers, speeches, or posters. Front covers of The Suffragette depicted a female warrior fighting against evil forces (17 October 1913), or a suffragette holding the Instruments of the Passion after being force-fed (28 March 1913). The spirit of the WSPU relied on devotion, self-sacrifice and a fighting spirit that ‘def[ies] the whole world if needs be, that calls revolution into being’ (Christabel Pankhurst, ‘Why the Union is strong’). In addition, these early autobiographies gave room to develop the individual aspect and shape personal narratives. Emmeline Pankhurst and Constance Lytton reflect on their contribution to a collective movement which forged a community of women advocating for the same goal. Post-war feminist autobiographies written and published when the suffrage movement had already ended ‘reaffirm[ed] . . . that identity formed within the earlier suffrage movement’ (Kean 1994, 60). These early suffrage autobiographies thus focus on affirming that identity and spirit and acting as propaganda tools to spread it.
3Using autobiographies and life narratives to ‘enshrine a community’ (Smith & Watson 10), Lytton and Pankhurst facilitated the shaping and the assertion of the WSPU’s collective identity by presenting personal testimonies of their militant experience and establishing them as guidelines to support the campaign for women’s suffrage. The authors play on their self-representation, turned into a ‘political discourse’ (Gilmore xiv) to convey militant ideas and actions and set them in the collective suffragette experience. My Own Story and Prisons and Prisoners therefore demonstrate how self-representation shaped and supported the WSPU’s collective identity.
4First, I will focus on how the autobiographical format used by Constance Lytton and Emmeline Pankhurst linked self-representation and collective identity; the private and the public; the individual and politics. Then, I will demonstrate how their personal experiences of militancy shaped and asserted a collective norm to be followed by their fellow suffragettes. And thirdly, I will observe how suffragettes’ self-representation are transformed to fit in the described militant experience.
5Biographies always played an important part in the WSPU’s campaign for the vote. Their newspapers are filled with biographical references to past female historical figures such as Joan of Arc or Queen Elizabeth to guide them in their militant campaign. Joan of Arc was a crucial model for the WSPU. Whether it was on the front covers of their newspapers, on banners, or brooches, her image was used extensively. Suffragettes, dressed as her, led their fellow members in suffrage processions; a front cover of The Suffragette even showed Joan of Arc with a halo and shining armour visiting a suffragette in prison (7 November 1913). Evelyn Sharp explains that Joan of Arc was associated with the suffragettes because ‘it [was] only necessary to turn back the pages of history in order to prove that the fighting woman has belonged to all ages and to all races’ (418). Her biography was used politically and adapted to fit the organisation’s standards in terms of membership and collective identity to legitimise militant actions. The WSPU indeed used Joan of Arc’s fighting spirit and martyrdom as a bridge between past and present women. Joan of Arc appeared as the ‘militant women’s ideal’, who comforted suffragettes, ‘her spiritual descendants’ (Christabel Pankhurst, ‘Joan of Arc’).
6Similarly, biographical information on respected members of the organisation was used to encourage identification with them. For instance, Votes for Women published brief biographies of the speakers at the Hyde Park demonstration on 21 June 1908. The objective was to inform readers about ‘the life history of the 20 women who are to take the chair at the various platforms’ (‘To Hyde Park!’, 141) such as Annie Kenney or Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence. This way, they gave a better understanding of the participants in the movement and favoured identification. Their life backgrounds were used to demonstrate how ‘united in their intense enthusiasm for the cause of women’ (‘To Hyde Park!’, 141) they were. By referring to women in the past who, the organisation claimed, would have certainly been involved in this modern militant campaign, or by presenting an array of life backgrounds to promote the unity of purpose, biographies were exploited to create and shape a collective identity around the militant campaign.
- 3 Even though it is highly unlikely to know about publishing decisions, it has already been suggested (...)
7Biographies used in suffrage newspapers could be perceived as informative and political propaganda tools. Moreover, personal writings and more specifically autobiographies acted on two levels: they were used as political tools like biographies, and they highlighted private experiences (Green 5). Their self-representation worked intrinsically with collective and group identity but also enabled women to talk about their individual experiences. Hence, Prisons and Prisoners and My Own Story are autobiographies functioning as ‘political act[s]’ (Gilmore 40), written about and for an unfinished movement. Emmeline Pankhurst herself explains that her autobiographical writing fused with her account of the militant campaign would ‘give the reader of the future a clearer impression of the strenuousness and the desperation of the conflict’ (Pankhurst 291). Having ‘hastily prepared’ it, she sought to appeal to readers already familiar with her and her organisation, but also to those who had not yet understood the spirit of the militant movement represented by ‘the fighting strength of women, who, . . . lose all sense of fear and continue their struggle up to and past the gates of death, never flinching at any step of the way’ (291). Even if Emmeline Pankhurst’s story was published after the WSPU had decided to stop militancy because of the war, the foreword of My Own Story suggests that her autobiography can be used to justify that the suffragettes’ methods had not been inappropriate. Emmeline Pankhurst draws a parallel between the war carried out by men which ‘has drenched the world with blood, and for these deeds of horror and destruction men have been rewarded with monuments, with great songs and epics’ while the ‘militancy of women has harmed no human life’ and is ‘mild, by comparison’ (Pankhurst xi). Her autobiography was also perceived as a political act by the general press of the time, and it seems legitimate to wonder if the publication date of this autobiography could also be a political act in itself.3 Either way, The Daily News and Leader thought that ‘the most interesting passages of [My Own Story were] those dealing with the growth and the principles of the W.S.P.U’ and saw it as being ‘on the lines of the speech’ (‘Mrs. Pankhurst’s Story’, 4); the same kind of speech which converted women to the ‘Cause’ and was sought after by Emmeline Pankhurst (Purvis & Wright 410).
8Constance Lytton also transforms her autobiography into a political tool. She sees her personal experience as an upper- and working-class prisoner as a ‘matter of conscience to speak out’ (Lytton 192), to defend prisoners and those unable to share their experiences. The political quality of these autobiographies in their approach to personal narratives is a feature of what is defined as ‘suffrage autobiography’ by Hilda Kean (2000, 177). Suffrage autobiography is not merely a genre meant to depict one’s history but can also be considered as ‘the collective expression of a political movement’ (177), and even though Kean uses this term to categorise post-war suffrage autobiographies, Lytton’s and Pankhurst’s autobiographies also qualify for this term. Suffrage autobiographies can be tools for both personal and political purposes: women can write about themselves, and at the same time these personal narratives fit with political objectives and are exploited for collective purposes. Thus, self-representation and collective identity become intertwined as the limits between private experience and public sharing are blurred. Accounts of imprisonment and forcible feeding are described in Prisons and Prisoners and My Own Story, and despite being experienced in private, isolated cells, they are shared and made available to be read and vicariously experienced. Emmeline Pankhurst notes that ‘in many cases the details have never been made public’ and that she does not feel comfortable with sharing others’ private experiences (Pankhurst 168). However, by making her own experience public she is allowing herself to talk about them too. Lytton is also unable to receive information on other prisoners (Lytton 294) left in their private cells, but she makes her own private experiences publicly available to readers.
9Personal narratives do not remain strictly individual but are transformed so that they shape a group’s collective identity. In Prisons and Prisoners, Lytton gives an account of her involvement in the suffrage movement so far, subtitling her autobiography ‘some personal experiences’. The second chapter of her book is titled ‘My Conversion’ and focuses on her path to the WSPU. Pankhurst starts her autobiography with a first chapter titled ‘The Making of a Militant’ on her early life and the beginnings of the WSPU. The collective aspect of these autobiographies progressively appears, and chapter titles note the shift from private recollection to public display for collective purposes. Lytton dedicates a chapter to ‘some types of prisoners’ she describes while in prison. In My Own Story, the other two chapters lose the personal touch and are named ‘Four Years in Peaceful Militancy’ and ‘The Women’s Revolution’. Lytton and Pankhurst are led to write about their own experience, but they also do so on ‘behalf of the community’ (Gagnier 214). Their autobiographies are used to share their participation in the suffragette campaign, but their status, celebrated throughout the campaign, as key members of the organisation transformed their autobiographies into platforms to give voice to their suffragette community. According to Emmeline Pankhurst, it was her ‘duty to perform in giving the world [her] own plain statement of the events’ (Pankhurst 290). Her autobiography eventually questions the role of her own experience in the production of a group’s collective identity. Even though she tells her ‘own story’, as expected from the title, her individual experience is intertwined with that of the collective group and the story of the movement. Pankhurst remembers how she ‘heard a sudden scream from Mrs Lawrence’s cell’ (229); Lytton writes about ‘the sounds of the forced feeding in the next cell’, and having shared a similar fate, comforts Elsie Howey by reminding her of their suffragette spirit: ‘No Surrender’ (270). Their imprisonments are described so readers have access to their feelings and can, for instance, picture with Lytton the ‘shrieks coming from the same direction’ (Lytton 227) of suffragettes being force-fed. Besides, Pankhurst’s autobiography is imbued with stories of other suffragettes’ experiences of militancy (Purvis & Wright 410). For example, she quotes Lucy Burns’s account of her experience in prison where ‘left alone exhausted by the dreadful experience [she] lay for a time gasping and shivering’ (Pankhurst 138). That way, their individual experiences also consider the community supporting them. Both autobiographies give a broader understanding of a group’s collective experience by providing other suffragettes’ prison accounts. They are made public and imbued with a political purpose, that of writing a ‘chronicle of women’s militant struggle against political and social injustice’ (Pankhurst xi).
10One of the key notions to understand the role of self-representation in building a collective identity is that of ‘mechanical reproduction’, which Barbara Green claims is inherent in suffrage autobiographies. She defines it as the ‘reproduction of narratives . . . , the multiplication and circulation of these narratives that represents collectivity through an engagement with seriality’ (Green 25). The repeated transmission of personal experiences therefore transforms narratives into collective ones shared publicly. Personal narratives are reproduced over time in both autobiographies: repetition of personal experience created a common experience for current and future suffragettes. Even if imprisonment or force-feeding can be felt differently by suffragettes, these actions, continuously described and completed by individuals, become ‘repeated rituals’ (Green 15). Lytton’s autobiography and other accounts of prisoners recount the lack of comfort of their cell, their isolation, their hunger strikes, and the process of forcible feeding: their opposition to doctors and wardresses, the tube inserted in their mouth or nose, the food poured out, or the pain and dizziness afterwards. Built by rituals, narratives and symbols (Polletta & Jasper 285), the collective identity thus finds itself in autobiographies and transforms them into ritual guides. Lytton in fact became more acquainted with the militant experience by reading personal accounts of other suffragettes’ experiences. She ‘“read up” the subject as [she] had never read in [her] life before’, relied on ‘Votes for Women, the only publication which gave events as they happened, not as they were supposed to happen’ (Lytton 14), and talked with other suffragettes about ‘the experiences of ex-prisoners’ (69) before her first imprisonment. By reading accounts of suffragettes’ experiences of force-feedings, Lytton knew what to expect and was more adequately prepared (Thomas 58). Suffrage newspapers depicted how suffragettes were held down and force-fed using wooden or steel gags (‘Torture of Political Prisoners’). Lytton’s individual experience is eventually similar. She describes how the doctor ‘had recourse to the steel’ gag, and how ‘two wardresses took hold of [her] arms’ (268). As Lytton did by reading other accounts, future suffragettes could also use her and Pankhurst’s autobiographies. Compared to the descriptive accounts occasionally published in the Suffragette newspaper, their autobiographical accounts also include introspection which, once shared, blurs the individual limits of their experiences. Pankhurst for instance recalls the collective dimension of her fight: ‘[l]ying in my lonely cell in Holloway, racked with pain, oppressed with increasing weakness, depressed with the heavy responsibility of unknown happenings, I was sadly aware that we were but approaching a far goal’ (276). When militancy had first mostly been about processions and meeting interruptions, it progressively shifted to a more physical and violent militancy (Green 71) which required actions carried out individually. By publicly sharing these individual actions of imprisonment, hunger striking, force-feeding, and overall martyrdom, these autobiographies become tools to mould these experiences into collective attempts at militancy. Hunger strikes could have a collective reach as well as force-feeding (Green 88) because the individual suffering it brought could be used as an argument in the campaign. Emmeline Pankhurst states that she ‘adopted the hunger strike exactly as though [she] expected it to prove, as formerly, a means of gaining [her] liberty’ (275). Even though she had never been force-fed, she still provided support and representation for force-fed suffragettes and acknowledged ‘other prisoners [who] suffered similar experiences’ (144). The transmission of these narratives indeed questions how ‘vulnerability’ can be used as a method of resistance and public action to spread collective agency (Butler 7). Eventually, spreading these narratives of torture and suffering certainly helped in creating a sense of unity ‘enhanced by assembling’ (Butler 12). When suffragettes learnt that Emmeline Pankhurst was isolated from other prisoners in 1912, remand prisoners ‘broke the windows of their cells. The other suffrage prisoners, hearing the sound of shattered glass, and the singing of the Marseillaise, immediately broke their windows’ (Pankhurst 199). Once set in a collective environment, the self-representation and individual experiences portrayed in these autobiographies thus shape a community or as Pankhurst would name it: ‘a Suffragette army’ (238). The militant campaign of the WSPU combined both military metaphors and narratives of passive resistance. These strategies pursued the same goals: justifying militant methods and forming a collective group. Military metaphors transformed the campaign into a moral crusade for women warriors while militant actions involving vulnerability converted suffragettes into martyrs.
11The political role of these autobiographies led to the development and assertion of defining characteristics of militant experience. They form a set of personal narrative patterns which defines more precisely what a suffragette should be. Both authors are meaningful members of the WSPU: Emmeline Pankhurst founded the WSPU, and Lytton, an upper-class woman, used her social status to denounce class differences. They were both known as exemplary suffragettes who helped the militant campaign. The image of the model suffragette perceived through the prism of self-representation is established as a suffragette who despite sacrifices and martyrdom is still fulfilling ‘the greatest mission the world has ever known’ (Pankhurst 238). Lytton’s autobiography was published when militancy was still strong as suffrage bills were failing one after another and the prospect of a vote was at a standstill. So, the more militant actions were portrayed and carried out, the more the WSPU could hope to influence governmental decisions. Lytton illustrated prison treatment for suffragettes and working-class prisoners, while Emmeline Pankhurst gave readers ‘a clear impression’ of what women were capable of (Pankhurst 291). Establishing a collective identity around one’s experience also meant convincing participants of the personal and mutual advantages of militant involvement. Comparing prisoners to ‘beads of a necklace, detached, helpless and useless’, Lytton believed that once ‘threaded together by means of the women’s movement’, they would become ‘a great organised band, self-expressive, yet co-ordinated and ruled by the bond of mutual service’ (Lytton 134). Autobiographies, when written by a representative of a community, provide readers with key characteristics to follow (Gilmore 24), and Lytton’s militant progress demonstrates the importance of both individual and common devotion and strength. Emmeline Pankhurst also asks readers ‘to put themselves in the place of those women who for years had given their lives entirely’ (Pankhurst 239) to understand the meaning of the militant campaign. She explains she was drawn to militancy ‘for that spirit of fighting and heroic sacrifice’ (4). Before being imprisoned in April 1913 for inciting felonies, she addresses the judge in a way meant to inspire readers:
I feel I have done my duty. I look upon myself as a prisoner of war. . . . I shall make it as long as I have an ounce of strength left in me, or any life left in me. ‘I shall fight, I shall fight, I shall fight, from the moment I enter prison to struggle against overwhelming odds; I shall resist the doctors if they attempt to feed me’. (Pankhurst 267)
12She presents the militant experience as a spiritual challenge, and similarly, Lytton calls for moral courage when imprisoned. During her third imprisonment in October 1909, Lytton indeed wrote on the walls of her cell a verse from the Book of Joshua: ‘Only be thou strong and very courageous’ (Lytton 220). Describing the spiritual side of the militant experience, suffragettes stressed the personal strength required to fully participate in the movement. Annie Kenney also explained that the militant campaign ‘stirred the emotions, it aroused passions, it awakened the human chord’ and was ultimately ‘more like a religious revival rather than a political movement’ (Kenney 298).
- 4 Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence participated in the suffragette campaign for which she was arrested sever (...)
13Suffragettes thus further justified their actions by transforming their campaign into a righteous fight in which militant spirit flourished. Christabel Pankhurst stated that Prisons and Prisoners ‘express[ed] the perfect whole of the militant idea’ and that ‘no non-militant woman could have written this book’ as ‘it has a simplicity, a clarity, a greatness, an inspiration that would not, and could not be found save in the writings of a militant’ (Christabel Pankhurst, ‘A Prisoner’s Book.-II’). She associates such qualities with the suffragettes and confirms that this autobiography could be used to shape and celebrate their spirit. Martyrdom links the spiritual militant experience with the political purpose of their campaign. It was profusely used by the WSPU to legitimise their campaign, and even though Emmeline Pankhurst stated that she did not force suffragettes to go to ‘prison to be martyrs’, she still viewed martyrdom as a ‘splendid ammunition’ (Pankhurst 169). With discourses built around the language of sacrifice, self-representations of martyrdom encouraged suffragettes to participate in the collective reproduction of that militant narrative. Lytton is perceived as a self-sacrificing heroine, and it is truly her spiritual journey while experiencing suffragette martyrdom that is remembered. In her review of the book, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence4 notes that Lytton’s autobiography is ‘an intimate revelation . . . of the pilgrimage of a soul suddenly awakened to spiritual reality’. She believes that ‘it is a story for all sorts and all conditions of women and men’, which has transformed its author’s militant experiences into ‘monuments in history’ and whose significance ‘extends far beyond’ the boundaries of the suffrage movement itself (349). Lytton also believed that her spiritual journey had transcended individual experiences and was tied to the community. Still in prison,
I seemed to feel the rhythm of the world’s soul calling to us women . . . My whole being responded and I yearned to hand on the message as I myself had in spirit received it—‘Women, you are wanted. . . . and whether or not victory is for your day, at least each one of you make sure that the one course impossible to you is surrender of your share in the struggle’. To you, dear, faithful Suffragettes at heart, whatever the handcuffs of circumstance which may limit your powers of visible service, I pass on this message. (Lytton 283)
14Lytton’s story is that of her conversion into the ideal suffragette, a crucial WSPU narrative. She did not support the militant organisation at first (Lytton 10), but by spending more time with militants, she ‘reached the stage when [she] had little left to say against the movement’ (18), and fully transformed into ‘a complete convert to the policy of militancy’ (21). Thus she becomes a tangible model for future suffragettes who may be converted as well and thus fully commit to the political and spiritual ‘Cause’ (15). Lytton’s self-representation of her conversion and its political power of mobilisation are transferred into the WSPU’s imagery. The Suffragette advertises her personal story as ‘a beacon for other women born and bred as herself. . . . She tells them how she, like they, once did not know the meaning and importance of the vote, and how she, like they, did not understand women’s political and spiritual need of militancy’ (Christabel Pankhurst, ‘A Prisoner’s Book-I’).
15Moreover, Emmeline Pankhurst stresses the importance not only of individual commitment and sacrifice, but also of the presence of a community in the militant campaign. In 1908, for instance, she recalls how suffragettes outside prison gathered to comfort imprisoned suffragettes: ‘Round and round the prison they marched, singing the Women’s Marseillaise and cheering. Faintly the sound came to our ears, infinitely lightening our burden of pain and loneliness’ (121). Lytton also views Pankhurst as a woman of great character with ‘remarkable individual powers’ (Lytton 8) which she uses to shape other individuals, calling women to join her. Pankhurst seems to acknowledge such ‘powers’ as she describes other suffragettes supporting her. She details how on her way to prison in April 1913 ‘scores of women followed in taxicabs’ (271), or when she was imprisoned twice in less than ten days in December 1913, a fire broke out in Devonport where a message was left: ‘Our reply to the torture of Mrs. Pankhurst, and her cowardly arrest at Plymouth’ (297). The reception of Prisons and Prisoners indicates a similar effect of Lytton’s self-representation on her readers. Christabel Pankhurst indeed writes that ‘other women reading her book will say in turn, “Women had all this to face and I was not helping them”, and will follow where she has gone before them’ (Christabel Pankhurst, ‘A Prisoner’s Book.-II’). While individual actions could lead to punitive isolation (Emmeline Pankhurst urges readers to ‘picture what it must be to a woman who has committed some small offence . . . sitting alone, day after day, in the heavy silence of a cell’ (93)), the autobiographies perpetuated a collective experience of these imprisonments. They ‘created a sense of unity and friendship and a feeling of togetherness’ (Myall 76) by establishing a common militant experience which could be shared with other suffragettes. Following imprisonments, suffragettes were also encouraged to reinforce ‘a culture of sharing’ (Purvis 124) as they were rewarded with medals or invited to meals to celebrate their release. Their individual actions participated in celebrating the suffragette identity as they guided women to collectively react and engage in the movement to share models of identity. Individual narratives become calls to action and eventually reinforce the unity of ‘purpose’ and ‘policy’ deemed crucial by Emmeline Pankhurst (236) to obtain the vote.
16However, while I have argued that self-representation played a role in building a group’s collective identity by reproducing characteristics as part of the suffragette identity, these two notions are also reciprocal in that a group’s collective identity can also shape the self. Life-writing by and for suffragettes also assesses how one can develop individually and politically by engaging in a collective identity. Prisons and Prisoners gives access to and conveys the characteristics of the suffragette identity by sharing Lytton’s personal experiences. If self-representation is informed by ‘systems of values, expectations, and constraints’ (Gagnier 3), then the suffragette identity asserted in the campaign’s discourse provides Lytton with these. She sets the standards of her self-representation by observing and reuniting the moral virtues promoted by the WSPU: self-sacrifice, spirituality, devotion to the cause, or selflessness. As collective identity can characterise ‘an individual’s sense of self’ (Polletta and Jasper 296), it is striking to observe how Lytton’s self was shaped and transformed by the movement’s collective identity.
- 5 The broad arrow symbolised government property and appeared on prison uniforms.
17Lytton simultaneously transmits and receives the collective identity of the suffragette community: she is taken as an inspiring example by suffragettes for her devotion to the militant campaign, but she also benefits from the suffragette community. Her position as an exemplary suffragette also required from her a more acute self-awareness and a desire for self-development. If she felt ‘proud to be one of the active ones at last, to be the companion of these women in particular’ (Lytton 38), her accounts of her imprisonments underline the privileges she received as an upper-class woman. Once aware of these privileges, she chose to reject them ‘unless [she] could also secure it for [her] companions’ (71). She recounts noticing that her shirt was ‘evidently quite new and without the broad arrow5 markings’ while the other prisoner’s shirt ‘was marked in many places with the broad arrow but had been so well worn as the lining of the neck and cuffs attested’ (122). She thus decided to exchange shirts with her fellow suffragette and ‘from this time onward it became a sort of game to watch for the privileges that were accorded to [her]’ (122). Already here, Lytton demonstrates her desire to share the more common militant experience and to bear witness to the fact that prisoners were treated differently because of their social status. As she expresses her sense of exclusion from the group she thought she belonged to, she simultaneously emphasises the constituent characteristics of the suffragette identity. While ‘for the first time in [her] life [she] felt of some use’ when involved with other suffragettes in a procession, she soon realised, with a sense of guilt, that her ‘little share of difficulty and sacrifice, of risk and dread, which had completely filled [her] horizon for so many weeks, seemed insignificant enough’ (50‒51) compared to what other suffragettes had done and been through: ‘most of them could look back on lives of much more useful service to the community than [she] could boast, many had made sacrifices greater than [her] own to join the Deputation’ (51). She sought to fit in by adapting her militancy and rebuilding her narratives to portray the collective identity of the movement.
- 6 Lytton scratched the ‘V’ on her heart so that the last letter would be on her cheek. She had to sto (...)
18If she had indeed failed to obtain the class privileges she enjoyed for others, she ‘wished to know from [her] own experience the routine life of ordinary prisoners’ (Lytton 123). She first tried to change people’s perceptions of her as an upper-class woman (Haslam 36). An example of that is when she decides to try and write on her body ‘Votes for Women’ with a hairpin6 after the ‘continued appeals to the authorities to treat [her] as they did [her] fellow-prisoners’ had failed (Lytton 164), thus making ‘a physical attempt to rewrite the text of her class body’ (Haslam 36). After her release from her second imprisonment in October 1909 because of her heart condition and her class status (Lytton 233), Lytton relates how she recreated herself by assuming a completely different fictional persona: that of a working-class woman called Jane Warton, a London seamstress. The objective was to see ‘whether they would recognise [her] need for exceptional favours without [her] name’ (235) and to finally go through what she had failed to experience in her previous imprisonments. She joined the WSPU under this new identity, appealing to symbols and images already present in the suffragettes’ collective representation. Indeed the choice for her first name, Jane, refers to Joan of Arc: ‘(for Jeanne is more often translated into “Jane” than “Joan”) and would bring [her] comfort in distress’ (237‒38). Her transformation was not only physical, but also psychological. Talking to a three-time suffragette prisoner, she indicates that she ‘envied her courage, but felt [herself] quite incapable of following her example’ (130) after her first imprisonment in March 1909. And yet, when she was imprisoned for the third time in January 1910, she proved capable of following that example and was even eager to be imprisoned and share the suffragettes’ common ordeals. When the time came for her to be force-fed, she felt paradoxically relieved to be finally subjected to what other suffragettes had experienced and to be ‘equipped to represent them’ (42): she ‘had looked forward to this movement with so much anxiety lest [her] identity should be discovered beforehand, that [she] felt positively glad when the time had come’ (268). Jane Warton’s hunger strikes involve a set of moral characteristics such as self-sacrifice, martyrdom and a complete devotion to the ‘Cause’. These actions assert the intricate relationship between the self and the collective movement. Lytton reshapes her ‘self’ to fit the standards of a collective militant identity, and at the same time her autobiography is meant to represent what the exemplary suffragette would do and thus, ultimately, to provide a model of engagement in a collective movement.
19The mutually reinforcing relationship between self-representation and collective identity is also clear in the account of her first force-feeding. On the front page of the original edition, the autobiography is presented as written ‘by Constance Lytton and Jane Warton, spinster’. Lytton often refers to her fictional persona in the third person. As if she were not considering Warton’s imprisonment as hers too, she writes: ‘It was the turn of Jane Warton. She walked across to the policeman, . . . her hair sticking out straight behind and worn in slick bandeaus on either side of her face’ (249). Yet, readers already know that Warton is Lytton, having just witnessed her transformation in the same chapter. Moreover, Lytton also acknowledges that they are truly the same person, but it becomes clearer when they conform to the collective identity as they are force-fed and become martyrs of the organisation. Lytton uses the pronoun ‘I’ to describe the force-feeding they experience: ‘I offered no resistance’ (268), ‘I choked’, ‘I was sick’ (269). By narrating that experience as hers too, Lytton is able to join the suffragettes’ collective identity. As the force-feeding stops, she distinguishes herself from Warton once again: ‘suddenly I saw Jane Warton lying before me, and it seemed as if I were outside of her’ (270), as if she remembered that she was able to experience it only through Warton. Warton is never in charge of the narration as she remains Lytton’s creation, but this co-authorship facilitates the use of self-representation as a political tool. Lytton indeed notes that Warton’s experience will never be believed, but due to the social status she had tried to conceal, Lytton will be able to tell her/their story; ‘[she] had come to help her’ (270). By intertwining their stories with her previous imprisonments and militant participation, Lytton highlights that her creation of and transformation into Warton revealed how the treatment of suffrage prisoners varied depending on class, but also helped her attain the collective militant experience.
20As Smith and Watson argue, autobiographies allow to ‘remake ourselves through memory, experience, identity, embodiment, and agency’ (81). Even though she had shared these accounts in the suffrage press at the time of her release, Lytton’s autobiography gave her an opportunity for self-reflection several years after these events took place. In 1910, she had stated that thinking about ‘all the martyrs, all the magnificent women in this movement’ and feeling ‘a tremendous gratitude to them, and admiration, which overpowered [her]’ had not helped her nor strengthened her for her prison experience (‘A Speech by Lady Constance Lytton’). However, in 1914 she eventually writes that she ‘seemed to grasp prophetically and all at once the characteristic qualities which [she] learnt later on by closer observation and experience’ (Lytton 26) and describes how ‘prisoners helped [her] . . . with the most friendly and powerful goodness that [she had] ever met’ (xiv). The individual self is thus ‘produced and maintained’ in autobiographies (Gilmore xiv), which participate in its construction. In her dedication to prisoners, she recommends that they should know, embrace and cling on to their ‘inward self’: ‘Reverence yourself. Be just, kind and forgiving to yourself. For the inner you of yourself is surely the only means of communication for you with any good influence you may once have enjoyed or hope some day to find’ (xiii). In her own case, Lytton leans on the ‘model of identities’ (Smith & Watson 34) made available to her to build herself as part of the suffragette organisation. Her goal was attained on two levels: she managed to access the suffragette collective identity and to include her self-representation in the suffragette militant experience. Lytton feels ‘a tremendous joy and relief’ (Lytton 299) that her actions should be recognised by the WSPU. Her autobiography is both deeply personal and thoroughly political—‘a human document, and that of the most poignant kind’ (Pethick-Lawrence 349), it recounts a journey towards self-transformation and belonging, and simultaneously conveys qualities to be claimed and emulated by her community of readers.
21Emmeline Pankhurst’s and Constance Lytton’s autobiographies exemplify the interdependence of self-representation and collective identity. They do more than strictly represent militant actions—they also account for the process of self-representation in a collective environment: Lytton’s autobiography describes her journey as she becomes progressively integrated into the community, while Pankhurst’s highlights her role in leading and shaping women who ‘were awaked at last’ (Pankhurst 51). Their accounts of their personal militant experiences were transferred into the collective experience of the militant organisation and became ‘deeply embedded in the public consciousness’ (Joannou 296). Thus, individual militant experience went ‘beyond the individual body’ and became part of a united community (Green 69) idealising common characteristics.
22While post-war suffrage autobiographies reflected on a successful militant campaign, Constance Lytton and Emmeline Pankhurst demonstrated that they could, as individuals, continue to promote militancy by giving their readers all the tools necessary to adhere to the organisation’s imagery and support its militant methods. Even if the militant campaign was forever changed by the war and did not follow the same path as that portrayed in these autobiographies, their texts still hoped to celebrate the women ready to ‘continue their struggle up to and past the gates of death, never flinching at any step of the way’ (Pankhurst 291). The motto of the WSPU might have been ‘Deeds not words’, but these early suffragette autobiographies prove that words played a crucial role in the militant suffrage campaign.