“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

Anti-Suffrage Book: Socialism, Feminism, and Suffragism; The Terrible Triplets, Connected by the Same Umbilical Cord, and Fed From the Same Nursing Bottle

Part of the NAWSA Collection of the Library of Congress, this ponderously titled book comprises about 300 pages of anti-suffrage invective. As the Library of Congress’ description puts it, “[t]his book equates feminism and woman suffrage with both socialism and atheism. According to the author, feminism and the enfranchisement of women will destroy the family. The book also suggests that pregnant women who vote run the risk of bearing ‘physically imperfect or idiotic’ children.”

The book’s dedication page offers a snapshot of its tone and worldview:

To the innumerable multitude of motherly women, who love and faithfully serve their fellowmen with a high regard for duty, with a veneration for God, respect for authority, and love for husband, home and heaven, whether such a woman is the mother of children, or whether she has been denied motherhood and bestows her motherliness upon all who are weak, distressed and afflicted.

This book is also dedicated to the man who is, in nature, a knight and protector of the weak, the defender of the good, who shrinks no responsibility, who has a paternal love of home, a patriotic affection for country, veneration for moral and religious precepts, and who has the courage to combat evil and fight for all that which is good.

Socialism, Feminism, and Suffragism is an interesting—if thoroughly dated and retrograde—screed. Though many modern readers will doubtless object to its attitude of frank paternalism, it provides worthy insight into the thinking of those who saw the push for suffrage as part of a larger and more sinister attack on the foundations of early 20th-century American society.

And Hubbard was indeed far from the only person to argue that giving women voting rights would benefit American socialists; see “The Red Behind the Yellow,” a poster attacking the suffrage movement on anti-socialist grounds.

You can read the Library of Congress’ digitized version of the book by clicking the button below, or here, via Google Books. You can purchase the book in hardcopy here, via Forgotten Books.

How it Feels to be the Husband of a Suffragette

This ironic, self-deprecating parody of a how-to guide is written from the perspective of an anonymous male suffragist—referred to only as “Him”—who is married to a woman suffragist.

Humorously long-suffering in its style, this brief book appears aimed at men who harbored vague sympathies for the suffragist cause but hadn’t given the issue much thought. “Him” uses often jokes to address common characterizations of suffragists’ husbands as henpecked, emasculated losers forever “tagging after the girls” (8). The book also offers some more serious digressions, however, such as this one in which the author assures readers that their wives will still be “theirs,” even if they become suffragists:

Personally, we—I and mine—fell into suffrage together and practically made only one splash; but it was long after we were married. You notice that I said mine. I meant it. Sharing some common things in common doesn’t necessarily prevent the lady from being all yours (20).

In a similar passage later in the book, the author uses humor (of a sort more likely to tickle an average male reader than his woman suffragist counterpart) to confront one very widespread argument against giving women the vote:

A great many people fear that giving a woman her honest equal rights in the world’s work is bound to make her act mannish, even if she doesn’t go to the length of militancy. My experience is that so far as it has been tried out it merely makes her act a little more like a gentleman (59-61).

Though its frequently patronizing boys-club tone may irk modern readers, How it Feels to be the Husband of a Suffragette was a clever piece of propaganda. The book’s rhetoric plays on a presumed simpatico between men in order to reassure male readers discomfited by the sea-change in politics and gender relations brought about by the suffrage movement. And though its stated purpose is to reassure such men and win them over to the cause, How it Feels to be the Husband of a Suffragette is unsparing in its criticism of opposition to women’s rights. After all, when “a man has lived in the same house with a suffragette for a number of years, he is likely to have a severe disesteem for all forms of excuse or apology” (10).

The book also contains various humorous illustrations by May Wilson Peterson.

How it Feels to be the Husband of a Suffragette is just one of hundreds of fascinating resources housed in the Library of Congress NAWSA Collection, which also includes pamphlets, newspapers, posters, and photographs.

For more on the contributions prominent men made to the women’s suffrage movement, see Brooke Kroeger’s 2017 book, The Suffragents: How Women Used Men to Get the Vote.

How Suffragists Used Cookbooks as a Recipe for Subversion

In this National Public Radio article, Nina Martyris outlines how suffragists published cookbooks to support the cause of women’s suffrage.

The first major work of this kind, The Woman Suffrage Cook Book, was published in 1886. By 1920, when the 19th Amendment was ratified and women nationwide gained the right to vote, an estimated half-dozen cookbooks had been published by American suffrage organizations.

Martyris shows how such cookbooks raised funds for suffrage campaigns and often featured suffrage propaganda, spreading the cause’s message. In addition, these books were used to counter the era’s negative depictions of suffragists as neglectful, kitchen-hating mothers and wives. Also, suffragists gained new skills and networking opportunities in the process of publishing these books, which were important practical outcomes for women at the time that helped further the cause.

Lillie Devereux Blake: Retracing a Life Erased

Lillie Devereux Blake: Retracing a Life Erased is a biography of suffragist and writer Lillie Devereux Blake, written by Dr. Grace Farrell, a professor of English at Butler University.

About the book:

Fiction writer, journalist, and essayist, Lillie Devereux Blake (1833–1913) published seven novels, two collections of stories and essays, and hundreds of other pieces during her lifetime. She also played a major role in the struggle for women’s rights, eventually becoming Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s candidate to succeed Susan B. Anthony as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

Yet for all her remarkable accomplishments, Lillie Blake’s story has been all but forgotten. As Grace Farrell reveals in this richly textured biography, Blake’s creative writings did not survive the canonical purges of women authors at the turn of the twentieth century, and her contributions to the suffrage movement were simply ignored in the official histories sanctioned by Susan B. Anthony. From the traces that remain, Farrell reconstructs an extraordinary life of passion and purpose. She chronicles Blake’s literary career from Civil War correspondent to novelist and provides an inside view of suffrage politics, correcting some long held misconceptions perpetuated by Anthony and her supporters.

At the same time, Farrell expands the generic boundaries of biography by recounting not only a life and the causes of its erasure but also her own process of recovering that life. She brings the reader along with her as she follows Blake’s path in the world, touches her diary, reads her letters, and campaigns to prevent Yale University from demolishing Blake’s childhood home in New Haven.

Reviews:

“[Farrell] here presents an engaging critical biography, the first in 60 years. She skillfully describes Blake’s accomplishments against the background of her struggles with prevailing social attitudes. Farrell’s own experiences in researching the book offer additional perspective on Blake’s life.”―Library Journal

Also see this review from H-Net Humanities and Social Sciences Online.

Google Books offers a limited preview of the book. You can also purchase the book from a number of online sellers, including Amazon.com and Abe Books. It is no longer available for purchase from its publisher’s website.

ISBN 10: 1558497528

ISBN 13: 9781558497528

A Voice of Their Own: The Woman Suffrage Press, 1840-1910

A Voice of Their Own explores the consciousness-raising role of the American suffrage press of the latter half of the 19th century. From the first women’s rights convention, a modest gathering of 300 sympathizers led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, grew the ever-expanding movement for equal rights, greater legal protections, and improved opportunities. Although the leaders of that and subsequent conventions realized that such public rallies, with their exhortative speeches, were crucial in gaining support for the movement, they also recognized the potential impact of another medium: woman’s suffrage periodicals, written and published by and expressly for women.

The 11 essays of this volume demonstrate how the suffrage press—in such forums as Woman’s Journal, Woman’s Tribune, Woman’s Exponent, and Farmer’s Wife—was able to educate an audience of women, create a sense of community among them, and help alter their self-image.

A Voice of Their Own won the 1991 Myers Center Outstanding Book Award, sponsored by Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America.

You can purchase 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 Women and The Press: The Struggle for Equality.

One Woman, One Vote: A PBS Documentary

This PBS documentary is a sweeping look at the women’s suffrage movement, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s famous Seneca Falls call to arms to the passage and ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women voting rights.

Narrated by Susan Sarandon, the documentary features historical photos and video clips of the suffrage movement, as well as a number of historians who provide needed context. The film also delves into the deep divisions within the suffrage movement, like the one over the question of whether to support voting rights for black men. In addition, the film looks at regional differences within the movement and differences over whether to use militant tactics.

The New York Times called the film “inspiring without being rhapsodic,” saying it tells viewers “as much about the exigencies of American politics as about the heroism of three generations of American women.” The National Women’s Studies Association Journal also published an informative review of the film, accessible through JSTOR. 

You can buy the film through PBS, or order it through Netflix.

There is a companion book by the same name that you can buy on Amazon. The book is an anthology of contemporary and historical writing on women’s suffrage.

“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 Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign 1907-1914

Deemed too artistic for political history, too political for art history, the visual history of the campaign for women’s suffrage in Britain has long been neglected. In this comprehensive and pathbreaking study, Lisa Tickner discusses and illustrates British suffragists’ use of spectacle—the design of banners, posters, and postcards, the orchestration of mass demonstrations, etc.—in an unprecedented propaganda campaign.

A limited preview of a review of The Spectacle of Women and full-text access options is available through JSTOR.

Google Books offers a limited preview of the book. It is also available for sale through online sellers such as Amazon.com and through academic libraries (both as an e-book and in print). You can check WorldCat to see if there a library with access near you.

“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