‘What made me a suffragette’: the new woman and the new (?) conversion narrative

Abstract

This article proposes that the conversion narrative was the paradigmatic mode of self-representation of the Women's Social and Political Union. It sketches the typical suffragette conversion plot through close readings of a variety of suffragette writings, highlighting two specific points: the process of conversion itself and the suffragettes' subsequent consecration to the movement by the ‘baptism of imprisonment‘. Exploring the suffragettes' use of Christian, often specifically biblical, language and metaphor, the article asks, what were the consequences of the adoption of the conversion narrative for the suffragettes' representation of themselves as New Women? While militant suffragettes appropriated the language and rhetoric of the traditional conversion narrative, they also revised it in significant ways. The article concludes that suffragette writers altered the form of the spiritual autobiography, creating a new plot for women's lives and a new representation of the New Woman.