Talk Description to Me
Talk Description to Me
Episode 113 - Women's Suffrage
Women had been excluded from voting in ancient Greece, republican Rome, and in emerging European and North American democracies. By the mid 19th century, many had had enough and began demanding suffrage; the right to vote in political elections. While some worked within existing systems, others attacked with amazing savvy and ferocity, resulting not only in stunning, even shocking visuals, but eventually great change. This week, Christine and JJ examine the visuals of Women's suffrage, from the media-friendly uniforms and violent actions of militant British Suffragettes, to political marches in the US, and monuments to subversive Pink Tea parties in Western Canada.
Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ Hunt.
Christine Malec:Hi, I'm Christine Malec.
JJ Hunt:And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to me, where the visuals of current events and the world around us get hashed out in description rich conversations.
Christine Malec:In previous episodes, we've talked about protests and the visuals associated with them. And we're going to do that today. But in a different way, we're going to look at a historical protest movement, the movement for women's suffrage, the right to vote. And, of course, there's a few qualifiers here, which is we're talking about, largely the Western world. And when we give dates and things, because we're going to sort of tell the story and talk about the visuals, it's really important to know that this is not universal suffrage. So when women get the vote in somewhere, like, you know, Australia, or the United States or Canada, it's not all women, it doesn't it's only white women. So in the States, black women couldn't vote till the 1960s. And in Britain, when women first got the vote, you have to be over 30. And in Australia, it did not include Aboriginal women. So when we talk about the successes of this movement, it's really important to remember that it wasn't a universal success right away. Of course, the other challenge is the visuals that this movement was happening in the late 1800s, early 1900s. And so our visuals may be a little spotty. Today, it's easy to look back and see this struggle as an obvious struggle with an obvious right answer. And it's it's a completed protest movement. But at the time, that was not true. And it's sometimes said that protests are the language of the unheard. And I think there's value in that. And so, at the time, the protests that were happening for women, by women to get the vote for women were very controversial. And I think that it's a really useful thing to keep in mind how courageous one would have to be for women who had typically been trained to be passive and told that women that we were not smart enough to engage that we didn't belong in the public sphere. For me the courage that they had those women had to stand up and say, Ah, that's, that's not cool. was an unimaginable, really. And so one of the things we're going to talk about as we do descriptions of cert of particular women who are relevant in the movement, is I've asked JJ to give a little focus on clothing. And the reason is not because I'm a fashionista, but it's because I think the clothes, the clothing, women were expected to wear is one easily accessible metric for the expectations that were put on women for femininity for lack of easy movement for decorative newness for proscribed behavior. And so when we get to descriptions of specific women, I think that's going to be really useful. For me, where I first started learning about this movement was the movement in Britain to get women to vote. And so this started in the mid 1800s, with the suffragist movement. And these were very smart, thoughtful women who believed that through negotiation and reason, they could persuade the government that women should have the right to vote, but it didn't really work went on and on and on. And eventually, some women in that movement got very disillusioned. And they decided that deeds were more important than words. And this is where some of the protests started from was this idea that nobody's really listening to us and so, protests became surprisingly flashy. So the suffragists that kind of big came branded as suffragettes in an attempt to disparage them in the media and but in in media savvy fashion, these women said, hey, that's cool name, we're going to co opt that and we're going to use it. And so I think it's fair to say that the suffragettes were incredibly savvy in terms of how to use media on spectacle. And so JJ, what visuals Did you find to to illustrate that? Yeah,
JJ Hunt:it was it's really interesting to switch from suffragist to suffragette at is, is profound. And the way the suffragettes were smart and strategic about the visuals of the movement, that it was important to them to stand out to create spectacle, and stay on the front pages of newspapers. So they were really intentional about the visuals of the movement. So one of the first things they did was they came up with colors, they came up with the colors of the movement, which were purple, white, and green, purple was to represent loyalty. White was to represent purity or virtue of the movement, and green was to represent hope. And these colors were used in in painted posters and on signs and on the sashes that they wore when they were protesting. They even use them in their dress code. They wanted a dress code for the movement, in part to visually demonstrate solidarity, right? When you see a group of people all wearing the same coordinated uniform. It's visually very, very impressive sighted people often associate that kind of coordination with a seriousness with with with unity. That's why military possessions always feature soldiers in matching uniforms, the suffragettes they had been depicted in the media by the opposition as grotesque hags, these horrendous characters harridans. These these images that had been put out in the media of you know, cartoonish, horrific caricatures of suffragettes were incredibly degrading, and even racist. I've got an image here, it's a postcard from 1909 that was distributed, that has on the front of that the entire image is just a cartoon image, a caricature of what is supposed to be a suffragette. This person has outrageously large lips, pointed teeth, one kind of pointed thing right in the middle of the teeth, a very wide flat nose, kind of bulging eyes, and like the sneering kind of, frankly, ape like animal looking like really incredibly racist. This is the idea of these are the women women who are who look like this. These are the women who who think they have the right to be equal and get the vote this horrendous, very unfeminist and very grotesque creatures. So to counter this, the suffragettes were really intentional about presenting themselves as very feminine quote, unquote feminine in line with the styles and fashions of the day, and yet extremely media savvy so photographs that were published in newspapers at the time were either in black and white, or sepia toned. sepia chemical process leaves images with like hints of brown and mustard yellow instead of pure black and white, and photographers and editors of newspapers, looked for images that had contrast for the front cover of their newspaper. So all of these different things the way they had already been presented the ideas about what newspaper photographers and editors would want. They pulled all of this together and they created a uniform. Women who were participating in marches wore long, white, fashionable dresses, with white hats that had wide brims, often topped with white [flowers], and then they had white sashes across their torsos trimmed in green and purple and those red votes for women. And the white dresses really stood out in these black and white photos, especially when compared to the darker clothing that most of the men were wearing. Right. The men are wearing dark wool coats, dark wool caps, dark top hats, and the uniforms of the police officers right the police officers who are harassing them and arresting them. They are also in dark uniforms with these dark bell shaped hats. And so they were really they stood out in photos in the purples and greens by the way that were used in their signs and their sashes and their banners and whatnot. purples and greens really stood out well in both black and white and sepia toned images. Not all colors do some colors get more washed out but green and purple. They stay vibrant. And I've got some photo examples here from newspapers. I got one picture here. Black and white photo of a parade of women in long white dresses, these white hats marching down the middle of the street. They're kind of marching from our upper right down toward our lower left. And they are flanked on both the far side in the near side of the street by men in dark suits and coats. And wow, this like column of women in white. And again, like ankle to shoulder, wrist to neck, like all of their body is covered in white clothing with these white wide brimmed hats. Another photo is a small group of women that sitting atop a carriage that's being pulled through a huge crowd of people by a single horse. The horse is dark, the men in the crowd are in dark clothing, the police that are there, they're in dark uniforms. And then high above them all is the woman sitting at the front of the carriage with the horses rains, long white skirt, what looks like a white blazer, and she's got on a white hat with a wide brim that's almost as wide as her shoulders, and she glows like a beacon of light in a dark sea. So smart with this uniform.
Christine Malec:This isn't supposed to be a history lesson, but women in England did get the vote in 1919. And I remember when I was reading about this, they stopped advocating full stop in 1914 to contribute to the war effort. And so it's not that they were insensitive to what was going on in the rest of the world. But before that time, they did things like arson, yelling rocks at at Parliament and very disruptive things that even today, we would go ooh, that's but at that, I just can't overstate how, how radical This must have seemed in that world in the world of you know, the early 1900s. And so can we talk about Emily Davison and what she did?
JJ Hunt:Yeah, I mean, this time this switch. And you're right, there are a couple of kind of key moments, one being the 1914, where they switched to the focusing on the war effort. But even before then there was this real significant protest strategy that changed and that kind of led to Emily Davison becoming the, you know, the advocate and the militant that she was. So before November 18 1910, the suffragettes had been having these big long marches, these big parades, they were out in public, and they were making sure that they were getting on the covers of newspapers by clashing with police by protesting and clashing with police. And then on November 18 1910, a day that became known as Black Friday, the suffragettes were protesting at Parliament Square, and they were surrounded by men, surrounded by police, and there was a riot. And 50 women were physically and sexually assaulted by police in this riot. And so for their own safety, they needed to change tactics. And instead that's when they switched to this campaign of property destruction of arson. There are newspaper photos that show stores with cracked and smashed front windows, these the big display window panes that face the Main Street on an old Victorian commercial street, telephone wires were cut, they torched and burn down buildings. I've got an image here of a tea house in Kew Gardens that was destroyed by suffragettes. And the building is nothing but a few charred sticks, like the entire building was absolutely burned to the ground. And one of the more extreme suffragettes, who was part of this very, very militant group was Emily Davison. She report purportedly beat a man with a horse whip, having mistaken him for politician that she had a serious gripe with. She started burning down mailboxes. These are the famous British Red post boxes, they're kind of chest high red metal tubes with rounded tops in their different configurations. But at the time, they were more or less these tubes, very sturdy metal mailboxes. And I believe she started by packing the mailboxes with oil soaked rags and then like tossing in a match. And then the idea caught on within the movement and small bombs were later used by others to blow up these post boxes. Emily Davison was arrested many, many times. She she went she went on hunger strikes while in prison. She was force fed through the nose, which was a torture that was perpetrated on women in particular who were who were protesting with hunger strikes, extremely painful way to force feed someone and so to to protest this treatment, she actually threw herself from a prison balcony in a suicide attempt, hoping to draw attention to the torture the idea being if people saw how horrendous this was that someone actually would rather end their own life than submit to this torture than that then the practice would end She survived the end of Emily Davidson's career as a militant came in 1913. With the Epsom Derby is this a story that you're familiar with Chris?
Christine Malec:I'm actually not familiar with it.
JJ Hunt:This wasn't something that I had heard of before either until doing research for this episode. So that 1913 the Epsom Derby is a is a horse race, one of the most important and storied races in the, you know, British sporting calendar, certainly at the time 500,000 people in attendance at the derby in 1913. And King George the fifth was there in support of his horse who was entered into the race. And so Emily Davison went didn't dress in white dressed all in black, so that she was kind of more incognito. And she got herself into position at the crowded inner track. So the inside track, you could you could you know, before the race began, obviously, get across and you could be at the inside track and she got herself right to the railing of the inside track. And the railing is of just a very simple chest high simple bar with continuous rail supported by posts every five feet or so. And she got a spot right at the final corner. This is called Tottenham corner. And the corner was in clear view of the cameras that were set up to film the race. So the cameras are set up across the track as the horses would round this final corner, big moment in the race. And there's footage of this this moment and what happens is the first cluster of horses rounds the corner and races by and then you can see across the track in the from this crowd, Davison ducks under the railing and she waits for the first pack to to move by and she finds a small gap between the packs of horses. She steps out from the rail onto the track directly in the path of the king's horse. And this whole action from when she she slips under and steps out in front of the king's horses, maybe three seconds tops. It happens very, very quickly. Like I said, she's all dressed in black, not white, so it's a little bit harder to see her, especially in this grainy black and white footage that's dotted with watermarks and very fine hairs. But she steps out into the track and she's holding in front of her a small object and what it is is a purple, white and green flag the flag of the movement and the king's horse slams into her at full speed and knocks her back at sensor absolutely tumbling. It's truly one of the most violent things I've ever seen on film, the horse falls to one side and skids along the dirt track. The rider of the horse flips into the air completely out of frame. And she tumbled like as she got hit she just what like absolutely flipped head over heels several times. And she actually died in hospital four days later of her wounds. Photographs of fanned alized property had appeared in lots of newspapers, artist renderings of women committing those acts of violence had been you know, made and shown to the public. But this was the first time that there was footage of a woman engaged in an act of extreme violence for the cause. And in fact, I've got a I got a the front cover of The Daily sketch which was a tabloid newspaper in Britain at the time. And it's got a photograph of like a full you know, paper wide photograph of this moment with most of the horses racing off a you know toward the finish line. But one tangle of one fallen horse with this Emily's body just kind of tangled up near the this fallen horse and and the headline reads death of Emily Davison who stopped the king's Derby horse and is the first woman to give her life for votes for women.
Christine Malec:And I know the the force feeding you refer to. It's very difficult to to talk about but I've I've I know a little bit about it. It was done with funnels and hideous torture and it it was used in the United States to specially I believe for women who were advocating for access to birth control and who resorted to hunger strikes in prison and it had long lasting health. Health consequences chest in fact, chronic lung infections chest infections. Yeah, lots lots of courage that it took for these women to achieve what to us seems so unquestioning and basic the right to vote. Can we talk about the United States there's definitely women's names are so well known. Susan B. Anthony Lucy Stone, what images were you able to find from the movement in The United States.
JJ Hunt:So I've got some portrait images, some portrait photographs of of a couple of key folks, I can describe them and then maybe we can talk a bit about images from the protests in the United States as well. So the classic photograph of Susan B Anthony that is shown everywhere it's she's an older women in this in this photograph, light skinned woman. hair parted down the middle and kind of pulled back she's seated and gazing off kind of past our left shoulder. She's got a stern expression straight line for her thin lips. She's wearing small round wireframe glasses. And she's wearing a like a black silky looking top of a dress. You can't see the bottom half of the dress she's seated and that's not in frame. But the top half of this dress is black and silky. And it's got a very high color for I believe what would be the shirt underneath it looks like a lacy pattern shirt. I'm guessing that it's a black lace on top of an another white shirt. So this is a garment with lots and lots of layers, outer black silk, and then under that a black lace and then under that a white dress or like a white shirt and some of that kind of lace and White comes out at the at the cuffs and you can see her hands are in front of her and and the skin on her hands is quite wrinkly. You can see many of the veins in her hands. That's the classic image of Susan B Anthony Lucy Stone. One of the images that pops up of her quite often. She's a younger woman again light skin tone. Again center parted hair with kind of heavier down by the ears so covers the center part hair, dark hair comes down and covers the ears in a very smooth almost bowl shape. But But frames her face instead of going you know called no bangs. So it doesn't come across her forehead so high forehead, fairly substantial nose, fuller lips than Susan B Anthony and she's got a mole on her upper lip.
Christine Malec:Although the struggle for women's suffrage resulted first in only white women getting the vote women of color in the in the United States were actively actively engaged in, in the struggle for this. And one of the leading figures and speakers on this was Adela hunt Logan and JJ, you said you were able to actually find an image of her
JJ Hunt:Yeah, a really interesting woman a Adella Hunt Logan. She had a white father. Her mother was a free woman of African and Cherokee to set descent. And there are a couple of different photographs and images of Adella Hunt Logan that are circulated. In one of them. She's standing and facing us, it's a full body portrait. And she's wearing what is a light colored floor length dress that is fairly straight down the skirt. And then the top the bottom of the dress is actually quite billowy, it's a little bit, it's loose fabric with what looks like lace all around the chest and shoulders, a very, very high neck that comes right up under her chin, again, very decorative, long sleeves, kind of puffy sleeves, not a lot of there's nothing is fitted in this, there's no corset in this dress. And in these photographs, she has medium light skin tone, and a very small straight smile, kind of heavy pronounced eyebrows, and dark hair that's that's worn up and kind of piled on the top of her head. It's hard to know, because these are black and white and sepia pictures. And because some of these pictures would be lightened, it's hard to know what her skin tone was actually, like, based on photos of of the time, because depending on who was producing these photos and distributing them, they might have an agenda with regards to, to skin tone.
Christine Malec:And what what kind of photographic or video images do we have of protests that happened in the United States around this?
JJ Hunt:Well, it's really interesting, you know, when I first did my initial research, and I just did a Google search, Google image search for, you know, women's suffrage or suffragette movement, and so forth. A lot of the image were images were pretty much the same, you'd get the same kind of pictures of women in these dresses and the big hats and sashes holding up signs. And there are certainly lots of images like that, that are available. But if you really dig into it, and what I did was I found a couple of different journalists who had collected photographs, folks who really know how to do their research. And they had amazing pictures from this era. So just a reminder to self you got to go past the Google Image Search sometimes, right? So I found some great images actually on the History Channel website history.com. They had some amazing images. So you know, one of the more classic pictures of the women with their signs. I've got a picture here from Greenwich Village New York City 1912. And it's a group of not quite a dozen women standing in a line kind of you know all the way across the street. All in full dresses. So these will be will skirts. So these are long calf or ankle length skirts pleated but but fairly straight and stiff fabric and then coats over top. So with with little bits of flares around the hips, buttoned usually very high with pockets on the on the breast and collars and so forth. And again, big, big wide hats, or smaller, more fashionable hats, but always with hats, always with long skirts, always with boots, many of them having the votes for women sash or sashes that have different sayings written across them. You can't quite zoom in close enough to see all the sayings that are on the sashes, but they're all facing us directly, many very, very stern, all light skinned, and they've got a banner that for different posts to hold up this banner plus ribbons at the sides. Like really this is a banner that required a lot of infrastructure to hold up. It's quite big. It's at least as wide as five of the women standing in a row. And in the banner reads, we were voters out west exclamation point, why deny our rights in the east. So lots of images like that of you know, women holding up banners and signs another like quite extraordinary image from the women's suffrage just parade in New York 1917. Knees are women carrying placards with the signatures of more than a million women. So it's right down the center of a very, very wide street pairs of women marching, holding, you know what would be like very large sheets of Bristol board. So I'm guessing like four feet across three feet tall. And you can't see anything that are on these signs in this picture on these on these placards. But apparently they these were the signatures of women who had demanded the vote. And there's scores of them walking down scores of these pairs of women walking down the middle of the street from our upper right down to our lower left, and the sides of the street are lined with people in dark clothing. So whereas before what popped were the women's and women in white dresses, the women in this parade in this March are wearing dark dresses, but it's the white signs that really pop down the center of the street. And then just one last image I'll share it's a really cool when school girls designing posters with women's equality themes. There was a suffrage poster contest at the Fine Arts Club in October of 1915. And in this picture are these teenage girls who are lined up at the VIP flat easels with paintings and pastels that they're working on. And you know, they're creating images, pictures, messages on on their homemade posters. Beautifully done I have to say and and all these young women are wearing what look like shower caps so that they don't get any paint or whatnot in their hair and they're wearing what look like papery aprons, all the way like smocks that cover the entire Front's of their bodies. But you can see poking at the bottom of these smocks, dark dresses and some just amazing shoes. These like very short boots with clunky heels. As all of these women, these young women are in the process of creating posters for this poster contest.
Christine Malec:In Canada, the movement for women's suffrage owes a lot to a group we called the Famous Five Nellie McClung was one of them she was a member of the Alberta legislature also included Emily Murphy, Henrietta Edwards, Louise McKinney, and Irene Parlby. And they were women who were from the west and one of the as well as women's suffrage. They fought and won for the right for women to be recognized as persons under the law, which has a lot of implications. But they also did they fought for women's suffrage as well and there is a statue of memorial to them in Ottawa. JJ, can we can we go through some of the visuals of that?
JJ Hunt:Yeah, it's a great piece. It's it's on Parliament Hill. It's been moved around a couple of times, because I think it's just been moved once but it's got a replica that's also in Calgary. It's an amazing piece of art. It's this monument with five kind of separate bronze statues, one of each woman in there presented right now in front of the Senate building in Ottawa on Parliament Hill. It created by a sculptor named Barbara Patterson. Barbara Patterson is an older white woman with short silver hair at the time the monument was built in 1998. And in all the photos I've seen of Barbara Patterson, she's, she's smiling. She's just beaming as she's working beaming as she's presenting the work. It really looks like she rather enjoyed this commission. And she actually included some personal hidden details in the piece, including a rendering of her family's terrier is one of the women's lockets and a reference to her parents wedding announcement as can be found on the back of the central newspaper. It's really cool. So the monument itself features all five women. They're gathered in roughly in a circle on a flat gray stone platform that's outside the Senate building rendered in bronze, bit of a rough kind of slightly chunky casting. So not all smoothly polished, which some bronze statues are. There's some there's some texturing in the skin and the fabric and in their hair. It's a very, it's an entirely tactile piece. People are welcome to explore and get up close to this a memorial. Three of the women are standing, two of them are sitting. And they're gathered for one of their famous pink teas. So these women would gather for their they would have meetings about the movement meetings about how to move their political agenda forward. But they didn't want this to be known publicly. Because they would face such fierce opposition. So would they they called them publicly pink teeth. Let's have a pink tea lady, shall we gather pink tea, and it sounded like a wonderful, innocuous, very simple lady like thing to do. Meanwhile, they were gathering and organizing like a bunch of badasses. It's just fantastic. So this gathering of these separate sculptures is quite spread out leaves lots of room for visitors to make their way around and through the monument and kind of explore and interact with it. The statue of Emily Murphy is standing beside an empty chair. She's quite tall, straight posture, wearing a plain ankle length dress with a scarf tied under the collar like a really loose neck tie. She has one hand on the back of the chair. This chair kind of resembles a like a straight back, wooden dining room chair with a leather leather pad on the seat. That's the kind of style a chair, she's got one arm on the back of the chair and her other arm is reaching out, palm up and open. It's a very inviting pose. And many people accept the offer the artists very intentionally put an empty chair in this piece to say, please come sit with us. And in fact there's a smooth, very glossy patina on the back and on the seat of the chair. This is common on brass sculptures and bronze sculptures that are routinely touched by the public. So this is an indication that people are indeed sitting with Emily Murphy and taking in this scene. The other standing figures are Irene parle B and Nellie McClung. Parlby is wearing a long buttoned overcoat and a wide brimmed hat. She has one hand on her hip, and the other one is gesturing at McClung. McClung wears a long coat with a wide fur collar that covers her shoulders is almost like a like a shawl. And she's got on a round hat, a smaller hat with a very with a short little brim that covers the top and back of her head, and she's got great shoes, little ankle boots with chunky heels. And in her hand, McClung holds a newspaper, which is also rendered in bronze, and it has the newspaper name the journal right across the top, then the date October 18 1920. And then a big headline that covers the front the entire front page of this newspaper in English and in French women are persons, less femmes on a per song. And it's just like wonderful covers the whole thing and directly across the circle from McClung are the two seated figures Henrietta Edwards and Louise McKinney. And between them is this is a round side table with some some cups and saucers some tea cups and saucers, McKinney appears to be looking at the newspaper directly across from her through her round glasses, and she wears what looks like a string of pearls and a little tiny bow like a brooch. I believe this little bow represents the white ribbon of the temperance movement. And she has a slight kind of closed mouth grin. Her knees are together. She's leaning forward in her chair, and her hands are clasped together and held beside her cheeks or beside one cheek with her elbows tucked in. And I found this quite a curious gesture. So I mimicked it. And I imagined facing this newspaper headline for the first time and I was immediately filled with this like sweet, warm pride with my hands clasped beside my cheek, elbows tucked in leaning forward. It's really a lovely pose. And then Henrietta Edwards sits on the other side of the table. She's a bit of a stout woman. She's gone on a long dress and she's got the locket on the necklace. This is the locket that's got the terrier on it. And she's also face Seeing the newspaper in her left hand she holds a saucer down at her lap, and in her right hand, she has her tea cup raised to head height, toasting the headline women are persons.
Christine Malec:Lovely, lovely. Something we take so much for granted now our legal status the right to vote, it did not come easily. So thank you, JJ, for describing that that was a real gift to me and to all women, I hope and thank you to all the women, courageous women who have stood up in the face of oppression to do the right thing. We hope you're loving the show. We really enjoy the challenge of putting together a new episode each week. To ensure that our efforts are worthwhile. We need to reach as many people as possible. That's where you come in, help spread the word. Maybe send a podcast link to three friends. Post about the show on local listservs and Facebook groups. Perhaps tweet about a favorite episode and tag some followers you think might like it, or show your love by becoming a patron. The broader our reach, the longer we can stay Boyd and keep afloat. With your support. We'll be around for a long time. Thanks for listening and staying connected on social media. It's what makes this so rewarding for us to have feedback or suggestions of what you'd like to hear about. Here's how to get in touch with us. Our email address is top description to me@gmail.com. Our Facebook page is called Talk description to me. Our website is top description to me.com and you can follow us on Twitter at talk Description.