Suffrage as Performance in the British Suffragette Campaign

In this study, I analyze the ways in which performance can effect political and social change, using the militant campaigners of the British women’s suffrage movement (popularly known as the suffragettes) as the site of investigation. I address various sites of performance essential to suffragette activities from 1903, when the Women’s Social and Political Union was founded, until 1914, when WWI put a halt to most suffrage activities. Using a performance-theory lens, I consider both legitimate theatrical performance and non- or extra-theatrical performance such as parades, speeches, commercial exchanges, prison terms, and militant actions. I contend that the suffragette movement must be understood and analyzed as a performance movement, and that is is performance, rather than militancy, that distinguishes the suffragettes from their non-militant sisters and from other social movements. Performance thus moves from the periphery of the suffragette movement to the center, essential to understanding the militant campaign as a whole. Through analyses of the suffragettes’ performances of history, humor, commerce, and militance, I demonstrate that the militant suffragists initiated a repertoire of feminist activist performance that exists to the present day.