Women’s Suffrage Prison Narratives

Prison Narratives from Boethius to Zana examines selected works of writers, from the 6th century to the 21st, imprisoned for their beliefs. The book’s seventh chapter, “‘From Prison to People’: How Women Jailed for Suffrage Inscribed Their Prison Experience on the American Public,” focuses on Alice Paul and members of the National Woman’s Party (NWP) who were jailed for picketing for suffrage in Washington, DC.

Since most of the NWP suffragists who were “jailed for freedom”—to use member Doris Steven’s term—were denied personal items like pens and paper, they did not leave behind a large body of jailhouse writings. However, if we expand our definition of “prison writing” to include other forms of visual and verbal rhetoric designed to inscribe their experience upon public consciousness, a great deal of material is available, including picket messages, The Suffragist magazine, and the “Prison Special” speaking tour. The chapter examines these efforts in light of Paul’s approach to non-violent “militancy” and rhetorical strategies such as “political mimesis.”

A free excerpt is available through Google Books, where you can also purchase access to the full work. You can purchase a physical copy of the book through the publisher’s website.

ISBN: 978-1-349-49153-7

“There is Filth on the Floor and It Must Be Scraped Up: The Muckrakers and Press of the Early 20th Century” in Media’s Role in Defining the Nation: The Active Voice

In Chapter 6 of Media’s Role in Defining the Nation: The Active Voice, David Copeland discusses the influence of press that critiqued American society and advocated for social change in the early 20th century. The topics covered include food safety, worker rights, and suffrage. In the “Suffrage” section, Copeland explores how the media of the time commented on, supported, and criticized the suffrage movement. He argues that “the mainstream American press and an advocacy press that championed suffrage kept the issue as a topic constantly in front of the public for decades” and that this exposure helped secure women the vote.

A preview of the “Suffrage” section of this chapter is available through Google Books. You can buy an e-book version from the publisher’s website, which also has instructions for other buying options.

ISBN:9781453911990

“Women’s National Press Club, 1919-1970,” in Women’s Press Organizations, 1881-1999

In chapter 34 of Women’s Press Organizations, 1881-1990 (edited by Elizabeth V. Burt), Maurine H. Beasley discusses the founding of the Women’s National Press Club in 1919. The suffrage campaign led directly to the establishment of this club, the most important organization for women journalists in Washington, DC for the first two-thirds of the 20th century. This chapter details how three journalists and three publicists, who had become friends during years of suffrage struggle, founded the club in to advance their mutual professional interests when it became apparent that suffrage would be won.

Restricted access, including an excerpt from the chapter, is available here, via Google Books. You can purchase a paper or electronic version of the book through the publisher’s website.

For more on women journalists and suffrage, see “A New Generation,” in Women of the Washington Press: Politics, Prejudice, and Persistence and “Those Knights of the Pen and Pencil.”

“The History and Structure of Women’s Alternative Media,” in Making Meaning: New Feminist Directions in Communication

In the seventh chapter of Making Meaning: New Feminist Directions in Communication (edited by Lana F. Rakow), Linda Steiner reviews the history of women’s media, conveying, “primarily through examples, a sense of the enormous range and diversity of women’s media while also highlighting their remarkable commonalities.” In her analysis, Steiner looks at both the structure and the content of various women’s media, noting differences and similarities rooted in a historical context.

Restricted access, including an excerpt from the chapter, is available here, via Google Books. You can purchase a paper or electronic version of the book through the publisher’s website.

ISBN: 9781138959583

ISBN (Hardback): 9781138940420

“Self-Defense in the Era of Suffrage and the New Woman,” in Her Own Hero: The Origins of the Women’s Self-Defense Movement

The fight for women’s voting rights is not the sole topic of Wendy L. Rouse’s 2017 book Her Own Hero: The Origins of the Women’s Self-Defense Movement, which chronicles the emergence of the women’s self-defense movement early in the 20th century. But the 288-page work’s fourth chapter, “Self-Defense in the Era of Suffrage and the New Woman,” does explicitly explore, as Rouse puts it, “how women studying jiu-jitsu and boxing in the early 1900s associated their bodily empowerment with their political empowerment” through the suffrage movement.

Routh’s broader thesis in Her Own Hero places women’s fights—both with their fists and for the vote—in the larger historical context of women’s changing social and political roles during the Progressive Era. As Routh describes it in an excerpt from the publisher’s website:

 Through self-defense training, women debunked patriarchal myths about inherent feminine weakness, creating a new image of women as powerful and self-reliant. Whether or not women consciously pursued self-defense for these reasons, their actions embodied feminist politics. Although their individual motivations may have varied, their collective action echoed through the twentieth century, demanding emancipation from the constrictions that prevented women from exercising their full rights as citizens and human beings.

Routh is a professor at San Jose State University, where she teaches social science teacher preparation and United States history. Her research examines, among other topics, gender history during the Progressive Era.

Beginning July 14, 2017, Her Own Hero will be available in hardcopy and as an e-book. You can purchase the book from the publisher here, or here via Amazon.com. You can also read the book’s introduction here.

For a fictional story based in part on a real-life British secret society of suffragette bodyguards, see the graphic novel trilogy Suffrajitsu: Mrs. Pankhurst’s Amazons.

If you’re interested in a more extensive account of some British suffragists’ use of militant tactics, see Andrew Rosen’s Rise Up, Women!: The Militant Campaign of the Women’s Social and Political Union, 1903-1914.

ISBN: 9781479828531

“A New Generation,” in Women of the Washington Press: Politics, Prejudice, and Persistence

Chapter Two of Women of the Washington Press examines the impact of the suffrage movement on women journalists in Washington, DC in the 1920s. It calls the suffrage campaign “a godsend” to women because it gave them a wedge for writing political news (p. 33). It notes that mainstream newspapers carried news of the campaign, including the harsh treatment of suffragists imprisoned in a workhouse.

Restricted access, including an excerpt from the chapter, is available here, via Project Muse. You can purchase a paper or electronic version of the book through the publisher’s website.

For more on women journalists and suffrage, see Women and The Press: The Struggle for Equality.

ISBN: 9780810125711