Writing suffragette history: the contending autobiographical narratives of the pankhursts

Abstract

Abstract On 10 October 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an organisation that was to become the most notorious of the groupings campaigning for the parliamentary vote for women in Edwardian England. Their militant campaign was led by Emmeline and her eldest daughter, Christabel, the WSPU's Chief Organiser, the two younger Pankhurst daughters, Sylvia and Adela, also becaming active in the movement. While all four women wrote accounts of the campaign, the focus here is on the published autobiographical narratives of the three elder Pankhurst women – Emmeline's My Own Story (1914), Sylvia's The Suffragette Movement (1931) and Christabel's Unshackled (1959). In particular, the ways in which these women presented themselves and each other, and how they related the story of their private family relationships as mother, daughters and siblings, is explored