Suffrage and subjectivity: reassessing May Sinclair’s feminist writings

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article reassesses May Sinclair’s feminist writings, arguing that the subjectivity foregrounded within them is not evidence of ambivalence or conservatism, but rather a means for Sinclair to strengthen her unconventional yet deeply held feminist conviction. I examine the subtly wrought arguments in Sinclair’s feminist non-fiction to demonstrate how she used these texts to articulate her own relationship to the increasing militancy of the women’s suffrage movement and develop her own critique of the patriarchy. I argue that Sinclair arrives at a far-sighted conception of feminism which is informed by her status as a walking woman writer, as she marches in women’s suffrage demonstrations under the banner of the Women Writers’ Unit. Sinclair’s self-conscious following in the footsteps of her nineteenth-century literary forebears has consequences for her feminist writings. Sinclair’s feminist non-fiction writings thus elucidate her commitment to an egalitarian feminism which condemns the gendered conventions of nineteenth-century womanhood.