
I was very fortunate to write a piece for the Sunday Book Club in Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph recently. It reflected on how far we’ve come since the suffragettes fought for the right for women to vote over a hundred years ago.
It seems somehow serendipitous that my latest novel An Undeniable Voice was released a few days before the US elections.
An Undeniable Voice is an exploration of the women’s suffrage movement – the fight for the vote for women in the UK through the early twentieth century, and all the hurdles the movement faced. My main character, Hannah Rainforth, moves to London, to the heart of it all, and joins the famous Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU).
In the period before World War I, women were not regarded as citizens in many countries across the globe. They had no voice. Most of us would be familiar with Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters, Christabel and Sylvia, who formed the WSPU after growing dissatisfaction with the repeated failure of the women’s suffrage bills that were put before Parliament. The WSPU motto was ‘Deeds not Words’: they believed in being active in the public arena to promote awareness of the cause. The desire to be heard, to peacefully protest, led to many suffragettes being harassed and beaten. The violence only escalated to imprisonment, hunger strikes and force-feeding. As the suffrage message continued to fall on deaf ears, the movement responded with militant action: vocal demonstrations, window smashing, then to arson and bombings.
Though the main thrust of my novel is women’s rights, and specifically the right to vote in the UK, there are so many echoes in the novel to the present day, and particularly in the outcomes and ramifications of the US election.
With the Capital riots in the wake of the last US election, the growing fear of escalating political violence at the polls did eventuate and even the threat of such action may have deterred citizens from voting in this election. Fear, intimidation and harassment were also employed to silence the suffragettes in their fight to be heard and physical violence used against them when they refused to cower.
Bodily autonomy has continued to be a leading issue in the US with the overturning of Roe v Wade and the policing of women’s bodies and reproductive rights. The fight for women’s suffrage was in part to address the legal rights to a woman’s body, and the rights of her family. In this era, a woman’s identity was consumed by her husband: she couldn’t even own property in her own name, an issue that Hannah contends with in An Undeniable Voice. Another character in my book is denied autonomy of her body when she is brutally and forcibly fed while imprisoned as a suffragette.
Clementine and Esther are a same-sex couple in the book and the challenges they face to live freely are reflected in the homophobia that continues in the US with anti LGBTQI+ legislation, including drag queens being banned from performing in certain states.
Further gender and sexuality bias continues in the US with the censorship of books featuring the LGBTQI+ community and many banned books are no longer taught in schools. Like Hannah, many teachers were strong supporters of the suffrage movement and advocated for equal education rights, including reading as a basic right.
Despite these echoes and the threat to democracy that they present, there is hope. Women were granted the vote after the Great War. And in the US, we have the shining example of Kamala Harris, who has risen to the second highest office as Vice President – the first woman in US history. Leading up to the US election, there was a very real hope that she would be the first female president in North America. But it wasn’t to be.
In a speech, Harris quoted her mother and said: ‘You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.’ Everyday living pressures may have been upmost in voters’ minds when they went to the polls, despite the many inequalities that exist in the democracy of the United States. And although America may not be ready to empower women to reach the highest office of the land, Harris has followed in the footsteps of the suffragists and suffragettes with her fight for equal rights, and remains an inspiration to women all over the world.
An Undeniable Voice demonstrates that we’ve come a long way since the end of WWI, but we still have a long way to go. Writing historical fiction really emphasises the context of all things, and the way fundamental issues evolve. While we continue to wrestle with the issues that have endured, the fight isn’t just to be fought to change legislation – it’s a fight to change the hearts and minds of people, a fight to change outdated attitudes that are handed down generation to generation and are designed to keep women and other minorities disempowered. Despite the result of the US election, the fight for equality continues with renewed vigour. And with that, there is hope for the future. Kamala Harris provides an example of what women can achieve and with more women striving for and achieving leadership positions within governance, we have the opportunity, responsibility and power to make the world a better place for everyone.