Did most women want the vote?

One way or another, we’re going to be seeing quite a lot of Helena Bonham Carter and Carey Mulligan in ankle-length coats with pale faces this season. They’re in the film Suffragette, which has been shooting in the House of Commons in recent weeks. The suffrage campaign was not only successful, it was successful to the extent that any other course now seems a bit preposterous. But what’s rarely mentioned is that the bulk of the resistance to it was from other women. It’s quite easy to visualise the suffrage campaign in terms of men vs women and that’s obviously the focus of the film. But the fact is, lots of women campaigned against being given the vote on the basis that it was unwomanly. Not contemptible or particularly downtrodden women either, but vigorous individuals at the forefront of other campaigns for improving the condition of women and higher education for girls — women like Mary Ward, a founder of Somerville College, and Marie Corelli, the novelist. Many of them were keen on female involvement in local government.

There was a discernible resentment at being bossed around by middle-class militants

It’s quite possible, though impossible to prove, that the majority of women were actually against being granted the vote. Gladstone intimated as much in 1892 when he wrote that ‘there is on the part of large numbers of women who have considered the matter for themselves, the most positive objection and strong disapprobation. Is it not clear to every unbiased mind that before forcing on them what they conceive to be a fundamental change in their whole social function, that is to say in their Providential calling, at least it should be ascertained that the womanly mind of the country is… set upon securing it?’

Right up to the first world war, it’s perfectly likely that most women didn’t actually want the vote.