Suffragette Read Online Free Page B

but that the vote is
only the beginning. And that is what I feel, too.”
    “Indeed, Dollie, it is only the beginning. Once we have won the right to vote, we will have been given the opportunity to voice our opinions and to be heard throughout the Empire. We can
make a difference.”
    “Do you believe that one day it will be possible to offer every woman the chance of a decent education? To give them self-respect and equal rights with men?”
    “Yes! We will put women into Parliament, Dollie. Think of it. Women contributing to the way our country is governed. Women like my great friend Christabel Pankhurst. She has a degree in
law and showed her skills with such brilliance when she defended both herself and her mother at their trial last year. But do you know that she is barred from practising her profession as a
barrister for the simple reason that she is a woman? Her qualifications and talent, which are outstanding, count for nothing. When we have the vote such sexual injustices will be swept
aside.”
    “England was the first country to grant women the right to practise medicine, wasn’t it?”
    “Yes,” smiled Flora. “Yes, Dollie, it was.”
    “So why not law? Or politics? It doesn’t make sense,” I added.
    Flora poured me another cup of tea and glanced across to the grand piano where a splendid silver-framed photograph of Lady Violet took pride of place. “My grandmother dedicated her life to
the Votes for Women campaign and working for those less fortunate than herself,” she continued. “As did my mother, I believe. Sexual equality was their goal, as it is mine. So you dream
of being a suffragist, Dollie?”
    “No, I intend to be a suffragette.”
    Flora stared at me quizzically. “A suffragette? Do you understand the difference between suffragists and suffragettes?”
    “The
Daily Mail
christened the women fighting for votes ‘suffragettes’ and, like you and your grandmother, I want to wear that name honourably. You ask me what I dream
of? Well, I want to fight, too. I want to see women such as my mother given the opportunity to learn to read and write, to be more than the domestic help in the home, to be treated decently,
equally. Never to be…” I paused because I was about to touch upon a private matter that I am not ready to discuss, not even with Flora.
    Flora sensed my reticence. “Never to be what, Dollie?” she interrogated.
    “Never to be subjected to male dominance, never again to be at their beck and call. It is a question of human rights and, if necessary, I will give my life to the cause,” I
confided.
    Flora laughed in a kindly way and suggested that perhaps I should not consider such dramatic resolutions. “I doubt that any of us will be called upon to give our lives, Dollie. At least, I
sincerely hope that we won’t.”
    I did not feel it polite to remind her that Mrs Pankhurst has described her organization as a “suffrage army fighting in the field” and so I kept quiet.
    Flora promised to give me all the support she could. She explained, though, that she is with the constitutionalists not the militants. “We of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage
Societies, the NUWSS, are suffragists, Dollie, not suffragettes. We advocate legal means of campaigning such as parliamentary lobbying, whereas the more militant activists, those in the WSPU, the
organization founded in 1903 by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, are the women the
Daily Mail
dubbed ‘suffragettes’. It was intended as an insult because they are judged
unladylike and because they are willing to break the law to achieve their goals.”
    “Yes, I know that the WSPU is the more militant of the two leading suffrage organizations,” I countered, for I didn’t want Flora to believe me ignorant. “And I know
exactly what first caused them to become more extreme,” I added.
    “Really?” she replied with surprise.
    “On 19th May in 1905, a group often women went to speak to the Prime