Tea and Suffrage

Abstract

This article explores the special relationship between tea and woman suffrage in the early twentieth century. It examines the use of tea by varied suffragists in the California woman suffrage campaign of 1911, showing how and why suffragists used tea as a tool for gaining the vote and why tea held a privileged position as a suffrage food. It explores the meanings and uses of tea in the United States at the turn of the century and argues that the feminine, domestic, and refined associations of tea made it particularly useful for suffragists. It shows how tea was extensively used by suffragists, who served it and sold it in aid of the cause, in order to make a claim for their domesticity and refinement, even as they made relatively radical political claims and fought a popular image of mannish, extremist suffragettes.