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Wearing a floor-sweeping dress and a wrought-iron chain around her waist, a woman yokes herself to Britain's Houses of Parliament. The black-and-white image, captured by a photojournalist in 1908, has come to represent the campaign of British suffragists for the right to vote. But a thoughtful new exhibit at the London's Women's Library, entitled "Art for Votes' Sake" (through Dec. 20), commemorates the centennial of Britain's suffrage movement by looking at the subtler, more complex images of the struggle for enfranchisement, ultimately won in 1928. After all, says curator Bethan Stevens, the iconic photograph of the chained protester was "surely staged" for the press.
In fact, Britain's suffragists were not confrontational but walked a cautious line between tradition and revolution, femininity and strength. The movement's poster women were depicted as powerful and independent; one Suffragette journal cover shows a resolute hunger-striker fighting off a forced feeding. But the suffragists also went to great lengths to show themselves as devoted churchgoers and nurturing homemakers. One poster features a lithe female figure declaring we want the vote... to save the children. Some journals went so far as to tell their readers how to dress to create a positive and respectable image for the cause.
Many of the middle-class activists were members of church sewing circles, and used religious iconography to lend a traditional veneer to their banners. A 1909 Women's Freedom League banner on display shows a sacred heart crowned with the defiant message dare to be free. Indeed, the movement idolized such figures as Joan of Arc, Saint Cecilia and Saint Catherine because of their inspirational mix of religiosity and power.
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Likewise, the suffragists used artistic media that bridged the old and new, the trusted and the groundbreaking. While taking full advantage of their stitching and applique expertise, they were also quick to employ new techniques: experimental posters like Jessica Lloyd Walters's "Asquith and Suffragette Prisoners," which depicts floating female faces, used newly fashionable "primitive" wood-blocking and stenciling. Suffragists also took advantage of celluloid, taking pioneering steps in photojournalism by vividly capturing a 1907 national protest march.
Perhaps more than anything, the show demonstrates how much the Women's Social and Political Union--better known by the tabloid-coined moniker "The Suffragettes"--owes to savvy marketing. Mary Lowndes, chair of the Artists' Suffrage League and a highly skilled stained-glass maker, understood the power of visual appeal. "Who takes the eye takes all," she declared. Tea sets, playing cards, belt buckles, cartoons, postcards, illustrated books, badges, pennants, stickers, embroidered aprons and figurines were all inscribed with campaign slogans and then mass-produced for use in daily life.
But the Women's Library show doesn't shy away from one of the more disturbing incidents of the suffragist movement: the museum attacks of 1913, when militant suffragettes used hat pins and toffee hammers to vandalize works of art that they considered demeaning to women. Mary Richardson inflicted seven "wounds" on the body of Velazquez's "Rokeby Venus" in the National Gallery because, she said, she didn't like the way men were looking at the nude. George Clausen's nude "Primavera" was likewise targeted; "Votes for women, chastity for men," went one of the campaign's more radical slogans. Still, such acts clearly had an impact; many museums closed temporarily, hurting both the tourism trade and public morale.
"Art for Votes' Sake" is not the only show in town commemorating the women's rights movement. "Women in War" (through April 18) at London's Imperial War Museum credits the suffragettes with paving the way for women's participation in World War I and World War II. And "The March of Women" at Surrey's National Archives (through Dec. 31) displays police-surveillance photographs of suffragists--possibly the British government's very first spy pictures.
But nothing brings the suffragists' long battle alive better than the artifacts displayed at the Women's Library--many of which have never been shown before. When asked about her achievements, the militant and multitalented suffragette Ethel Smyth once replied: "I have conducted my own operas... written books, spoken speeches and don't always make sure that my hat is on straight; for these and other equally pertinent reasons... I am well known." After 75 years of voting equality, this exhibit reminds us that great victories may be best remembered in iconic snapshots. But they are won with persistence, detail by telling detail: a tilted hat, an artful banner, a teacup painted with a silently trumpeting angel.
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