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ABSTRACT
While recent academic study focuses on the importance of periodical culture to the British women’s suffrage movement, comparatively little study focuses on the representation of periodical culture within fiction. With its emphasis on Sally’s narrative voice and plot, Gertrude Colmore’s 1911 novel Suffragette Sally foregrounds a working-class woman’s experience joining the movement and carrying out militant acts. The WSPU newspaper Votes for Women features heavily in the novel, being read by all three protagonists and sold in the gutters by Sally. In this essay, a close reading of the novel alongside research investigating suffrage periodicals grants a new understanding of how such papers were used to promote the movement. Exploring Sally’s time as a female newsy builds on the periodical trend of highlighting the positives of selling the paper and underplaying the negative experiences of these suffragettes. Additionally, the power of the periodical positions words as a form of deeds.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 DiCenzo, “Gutter Politics,” 20.
2 Colmore, Suffragette Sally, 290.
3 Norquay and Park, “Mediating Women’s Suffrage Literature,” 304.
4 Hannam and Holden, “Introduction,” 285.
5 Bazin and Waters, “Mediated and Mediating Feminisms,” 352.
6 Lee, Suffragette Sally, cover.
7 DiCenzo, “Gutter Politics,” 21.
8 Ibid., 24.
9 Colmore, Suffragette Sally, 91.
10 Ibid.
11 Green, Feminist Periodicals and Daily Life, loc. 1667.
12 Ibid.
13 Colmore, Suffragette Sally, 154.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Green, Feminist Periodicals and Daily Life, loc. 1682.
18 Colmore, Suffragette Sally, 44.
19 Roe, qtd. in Peterson, “The Politics of a Moral Crusade,” 104.
20 Lee, Suffragette Sally, 16.
21 Ibid.
22 For more on themes, see Edwards, “The Regiment of Women” and Paul, “Commitment and Class.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Rachel Hammer
Rachel Hammer, the research and instruction librarian at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, earned her MA in English from the University of Northern Colorado and her MLIS from the University of Denver. Hammer’s diverse research interests include the use of literary techniques and/or humor in library instruction sessions, narrative structure and diction in literature, and stock characters and identity in detective fiction.