Women’s Campaign for the Right to Vote
By: Tommy • Essay • 1,961 Words • March 18, 2010 • 1,339 Views
Women’s Campaign for the Right to Vote
Women's Campaign for the Right to Vote
This propaganda poster, produced 16 years before women gained the
vote, explains the view of the campaigners by illustrating pictures of
what women may be and yet not have the vote. The pictures illustrate
women as a major, nurse, mother, doctor or teacher and factory hand.
This only applies to women of the higher and middle class, eg: women
of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) (National
Union who could afford such an education. It shows that women may be
successful even without the vote. Source A explains the importance for
votes for women by illustrating what men may have been and yet not
lose the vote. The illustrations show men as a convict, lunatic,
proprietor of white slaves, unfit for service and a drunkard. This
gives a bad view of men who even have the vote are not as successful
or wise as the women illustrated above the men.
Source A suggests the author wants us to believe that women can be
more successful than men, despite not having the vote and could gain a
higher status in society than men who are illustrated as unsuccessful
and in low paid jobs.
The idea behind this poster is to illustrate the determination of
women to get the vote. Not unlike many women in the past, such as
Florence Nightingale and Marie Curie, who stood up for their rights
and showed that even having a lower status than men, like the women
campaigning for the vote, they could not be prevented from standing up
for their rights.
Question 2
Source B and Source C both have similarities between them that
suggests women were seen as too violent and could not be trusted if
given the vote.
Source B describes the campaigners as a number of discontented women
with shrill cries. This source gives the message that women are
destined not to receive the vote but to produce male voters and
suggests that although women suffer unfairly from the demands of men
this is as a direct result of the way mothers bring up their sons.
Obviously the author does not believe in women gaining the vote.
Source C illustrates two women who are both campaigning for female
suffrage. The one on the left is a Suffragist and the one on the right
is a Suffragette. It gives out the message that suffragettes were
violent and prevented women, who were non violent like the NUWSS, from
getting the vote. This hints that if the WSPU didn't exist women would
have been given the vote much earlier. There is a clear indication of
prejudice and discrimination in this picture, showing the suffragette
who belongs to the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in rugged
clothes, shaking her fist and shouting where as the suffragist on the
right, belonging to the NUWSS, is wearing nice clothes and is upright
and not shouting. This suggests also that suffragists came mainly from
the middle and upper classes whereas the suffragettes came mainly from
the poorer working class. The images of the two women chosen by the
cartoonist give a view of how people and the author himself may have
interpreted the campaign.