Abstract
This chapter focuses on the upbringing of three girls in Victorian Britain who were members of the Pankhurst family , often called the “first family of British feminism”—Christabel, born in 1880 , Sylvia , in 1882, and Adela, in 1885 . Their parents, Emmeline and Richard Marsden Pankhurst, were actively involved in the progressive causes of the day, including women’s suffrage and socialism. Their daughters were not isolated from these regularly discussed issues. Further, they participated in political gatherings held within the home and were often taken to political meetings outside it. The commitment to causes into which the girls were socialised stayed with them throughout their adult lives despite their differing journeys.
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Notes
- 1.
For further information about the Pankhurst girls Christabel, Sylvia and Adela, in addition to the accounts they wrote themselves and which are drawn on in this chapter, see, for example, David Mitchell, The Fighting Pankhursts (London: Trinity Press, 1967), where he notes the ‘sturdy radicalism’ of family life (preface); David Mitchell, Queen Christabel: A Biography of Christabel Pankhurst (London: MacDonald and Jane’s, 1977), which largely relies on Sylvia’s version of their childhood; Martin Pugh The Pankhursts (London: Allen Lane Penguin Press, 2001), 76, speaks of the ‘whirlwind of adult activities’ that dominated family life; June Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography (London: Routledge, 2002), chaps. 2, 3, and 4 and June Purvis, Christabel Pankhurst: A Biography (London: Routledge, 2018), which both question Sylvia’s claims. Paula Bartley, Emmeline Pankhurst (London: Routledge, 2002), 31, notes that the Pankhurst children were brought up in a radical political atmosphere, ‘their behaviour conditioned by a framework of rights and responsibilities.’
- 2.
E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals (London: Longmans, 1931), 42–45, 49–51; Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled: the Story of How We Won the Vote (London: Hutchinson, 1959), 19–32.
- 3.
Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1914), 9.
- 4.
Quoted in Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, 22.
- 5.
E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement, 87–88; Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, p. 27; Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 26–27 and 142–143.
- 6.
Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story, 13.
- 7.
Ibid., 13.
- 8.
Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, 23–24.
- 9.
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866–1928 (London: UCL Press, 1999), 514–515.
- 10.
E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement, 90.
- 11.
Ibid., 91.
- 12.
Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, 28.
- 13.
Quoted in Sandra Stanley Holton, ‘Now You See It, Now You Don’t: the Women’s Franchise League and Its Place in Contending Narratives of the Women’s Suffrage Movement’ in Maroula Joannou and June Purvis (eds), The Women’s Suffrage Movement: New Feminist Perspectives, (Manchester University Press, 1998), 24.
- 14.
Interview with Mrs. Pankhurst, Women’s Herald, 7 February 1891, 241–2.
- 15.
Bartley, Emmeline Pankhurst, 240 concludes that Emmeline was ‘unmistakenly a Victorian’. However, it is important to note that Emmeline’s advanced ideas about the role of women in society embraced many of the characteristics of the ‘new woman’ stereotype of the age—see Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 35.
- 16.
E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement, 107.
- 17.
Ibid., 108.
- 18.
E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement, 102–108.
- 19.
Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, p. 28.
- 20.
E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement, 122.
- 21.
Ibid., 124.
- 22.
Ibid., 121–122.
- 23.
Ibid., 123–4.
- 24.
Mrs. Pankhurst, Labour Leader, 4 July 1896.
- 25.
Labour Leader, 15 September 1894.
- 26.
Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, 25.
- 27.
See, for example, Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, especially 1–8, and Purvis, Christabel Pankhurst, introduction.
- 28.
Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, 69.
- 29.
See June Purvis, ‘Christabel Pankhurst—a Conservative Suffragette?’ in Clarisse Berthezene and Julie Gottlieb (eds), Women, Gender and the Conservative Party, 1880s to the Present (Manchester University Press, 2017).
- 30.
See Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 348–353, for further details.
- 31.
Hilda Kean, ‘Searching for the Past in Present Defeat: The Construction of Historical and Political Identity in British Feminism in the 1920s and 1930s’, Women’s History Review, 3 (1994), 73–74.
- 32.
June Purvis, The March of the Women: A BBC Drama From 1974 Highlights The Tensions in Writing Feminist History, History Today, November 2014, 5.
- 33.
Pugh, The Pankhursts, 77, suggests in contrast that it was Sylvia who ‘coped best’ during these years.
- 34.
E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement, 267.
- 35.
Ibid., 98–99.
- 36.
Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, 29.
- 37.
E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement, 107.
- 38.
Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, 30.
- 39.
E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement, 67.
- 40.
Ibid., 100.
- 41.
Ibid., 101.
- 42.
Ibid., 101–2.
- 43.
Adela Pankhurst Walsh, ‘My Mother: An Explanation & Vindication’ (Unpublished manuscript, 11, Adela Pankhurst Walsh Papers, National Library of Australia, Canberra).
- 44.
Adela Pankhurst Walsh, ‘My Mother’, 49.
- 45.
Verna Coleman, Adela Pankhurst: the Wayward Suffragette 1885–1961 (Melbourne University Press, 1996).
- 46.
Adela Pankhurst Walsh, ‘My Mother’, 4.
- 47.
Ibid., 17–18.
- 48.
Coleman, Adela Pankhurst, 21.
- 49.
Adela Pankhurst Walsh, ‘My Mother’, 23.
- 50.
Christabel Pankhurst, Unshackled, 35.
- 51.
See June Purvis, ‘Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928), Suffragette Leader and Single Parent in Edwardian Britain’, Women’s History Review, 20 (2011), 87–108.
- 52.
Adela Pankhurst Walsh, ‘My Mother’, 25–27; Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst, 55–56.
- 53.
Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story, 33.
- 54.
Ibid., 33–35.
- 55.
Ibid., 35.
- 56.
Emmeline Pankhurst to Mr. Nodal, 27 November 1902 (June Purvis Private Collection).
- 57.
Mr. Nodal to Emmeline Pankhurst, 27 November 1902 (June Purvis Private Collection).
- 58.
Emmeline Pankhurst to Mr. Nodal, 29 November 1902 (June Purvis Private Collection).
- 59.
Carol Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981).
Bibliography
Unpublished Archival Sources
National Library of Australia, Canberra
Adela Pankhurst Walsh Papers
‘Adela Pankhurst Walsh, My Mother: An Explanation & Vindication’
June Purvis Private Collection
Emmeline Pankhurst to Mr. Nodal, 27 November 1902
Mr. Nodal to Emmeline Pankhurst, 27 November 1902
Emmeline Pankhurst to Mr. Nodal, 29 November 1902
Contemporary Printed Sources
Interview with Mrs. Pankhurst, Women’s Herald, 7 February 1891
Mrs. Pankhurst, Labour Leader, 4 July 1896
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Bartley, Paula, Emmeline Pankhurst (London: Routledge, 2002)
Coleman, Verna, Adela Pankhurst: The Wayward Suffragette 1885–1961 (Melbourne University Press, 1966)
Crawford, Elizabeth, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866–1928 (London: UCL Press, 1999)
Dyhouse, Carol, Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981)
Holton, Sandra Stanley, ‘Now You See It, Now You Don’t: The Women’s Franchise League and its Place In Contending Narratives Of The Women’s Suffrage Movement’ in Maroula Joannou and June Purvis (eds), The Women’s Suffrage Movement: New Feminist Perspectives (Manchester University Press, 1998), 15–36
Kean, Hilda, ‘Searching for the Past in Present Defeat: The Construction of Historical and Political Identity in British Feminism in the 1902s and 1920s’, Women’s History Review, 3 (1994), 57–80
Mitchell, David, The Fighting Pankhursts (London: Trinity Press, 1967)
Mitchell, David, Queen Christabel: A Biography of Christabel Pankhurst (London: MacDonald & Janes’s, 1977)
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Pankhurst, Emmeline, My Own Story (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1914)
Pankhurst, E. Sylvia, The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals (London: Longmans, 1931)
Pugh, Martin, The Pankhursts (London: Allen Lane Penguin Press, 2001)
Purvis, June, Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography (London: Routledge, 2002)
Purvis, June, ‘Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928), Suffragette Leader and Single Parent in Edwardian Britain’, Women’s History Review, 20 (2011), 87–101
Purvis, June, ‘The March of the Women: A BBC Drama from 1974 Highlights the Tensions in Writing Feminist History’, History Today, November 2014 (online at http://www.historytoday.com/june-purvis/march-women)
Purvis, June, ‘Christabel Pankhurst—A Conservative Suffragette?’ in Clarisse Berthezѐne and Julie Gottlieb (eds), Man, Women, Gender and the Conservative Party (Manchester University Press, 2017)
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West, Rebecca, ‘Mrs. Pankhurst’ in The Post Victorians, with an introduction by Very Reverend W. R. Inge (London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1933), 479–500
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Purvis, J. (2018). ‘[T]he Children Bobbed Like Corks on the Tide of Adult Life’: The Political Education of the Pankhurst Girls in Late Victorian England. In: O'Dowd, M., Purvis, J. (eds) A History of the Girl. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69278-4_7
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