Freedom's Cause: Lives of the Suffragettes

Contemporary Review, April, 2004

Freedom's Cause: Lives of the Suffragettes. Fran Abrams. Profile Books. [pounds sterling]17.99. xvii 283 pages. ISBN 1-86197-425-6. The story of the suffragists and suffragettes (the more radical wing) has been told numerous times. Here we have a collection of short biographies of ten women and two men who were part of the movement and these help to flesh out our understanding.

The aim is to tell 'the history of the suffrage movement through the lives of some ... who were caught up in it'. The ten women combine well-known leaders such as Emmeline Pankhurst, Constance Markievicz, Annie Kenney and Millicent Fawcett as well as other less well known including Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, Adela Pankhurst, Mary Ward, May Billinghurst, Emily Wilding Davison and Margaret Bond-field. The two men are the I.L.P. leader, Keir Hardie and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence. The author is in no doubt that the suffragette movement not only helped women to get the vote but injected 'a new, modern notion of femininity into women's consciousness'. They gave women 'a sense of self that has never left them'.