In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

75 Chapter 3 Visionary Women, Rebels for God’s Laws The militant suffrage movement built its argument in no small part on a foundation of past achievements by visionary women. In a series of essays for Votes for Women Emily Davison celebrated the combination of religious faith, vision, and commitment of nine women—­ foremothers who were able to help change the world. Like the women she wrote about, Davison, too, was a visionary, not only in the sense of looking forward to a more just and equitable society, but also a in the sense of one who looks within for the spiritual support for the “rightness” of her earthly vision. It is hard to overestimate the degree to which elements of Christian spirituality sustained many members of the suffrage movement which, like Labour and Socialist movements of the time, was based on a belief that social justice was closely tied to the will of God. Keir Hardie, the Labour politician who was a staunch supporter of woman suffrage, said that socialism, the foundation of his Labour politics, would “resuscitate the Christianity of Christ,” that socialism was the “embodiment of Christianity in our industrial system.”1 Christian faith and Christian history provided the matrix in which many of the most active militant suffragettes lived. Emmeline Pankhurst invoked sacred language in the pages of Votes for Women when the government began forcibly feeding imprisoned suffragettes in the fall of 1909. Proclaiming the dawn of a new era of spiritual awakening in an essay titled “The Fiery Cross,” published on October 1, Pankhurst defied the power of the government and prophesied that the suffering of imprisoned women would become a radical Advent message and a Pentecostal fire that would 1. Stanley Pierson, Marxism and the Origins of British Socialism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973), 202; Henry Pelling, The Origins of the Labour Party: 1880–­ 1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 140. 76 In the Thick of the Fight breathe into the ear of many a sleeper the one word ‘Awake,’ and she will arise to slumber no more. It will descend with the gift of tongues upon many who have been hitherto dumb, and they will go forth to preach the news of deliverance . . . For the spirit which is in woman to-­ day cannot be quenched; it is stronger than all earthly potentates and powers; it is stronger than all tyranny, cruelty and oppression; it is stronger even than death itself” Militant suffragettes drew on a long-­ standing Christian tradition of using visionary experience to align themselves with a higher power in opposition to earthly might. Lady Constance Lytton recounts just such a visionary moment during her imprisonment in Liverpool’s Walton Gaol in January 1910. Her vision of the setting sun creating the image of the three crosses of Calvary both affirms the suffering she was enduring from forcible feeding and places officials of the current government among those who witnessed, but would not stop, Christ’s crucifixion. It looked different from any of the pictures I had seen. The cross of Christ, the cross of the repentant thief, and the cross of the sinner who had not repented—­ that cross looked blacker than the others, and behind it was an immense crowd. The light from the other two crosses seemed to shine on this one, and the Christ was crucified that He might undo all the harm that was done. I saw amongst the crowd the poor little doctor and the Governor, and all that helped to torture these women in prison, but they were nothing compared to the men in the cabinet who wielded their force over them. There were the upholders of vice and the men who support the thousand injustices to women, some knowingly, and some unconscious of the harm and cruelty entailed. Then the room grew dark and I fell asleep. (Of Prisons and Prisoners , 276) Mary Richardson found the image of the Virgin in the Holloway Prison chapel transfixing—­ a symbol of affective and affirmative Christianity utterly unlike the stern and constraining prison service she attended: On that spring Sunday morning the sun slanted in through the windows and gilded everything within the chapel. The face of a statue of the Virgin which had been newly placed there seemed suffused with the light. I could not keep my eyes from her sweet smiling countenance. Its message, it seemed to me, came to us remotely, from far off. Despite the sunshine, our company seemed [3.145...

Share