The Cause: A Short History of the Women’s Movement in Great Britain

by Ray Strachey

”The history of the Women’s Movement is the whole history of the nineteenth century. Nothing which occurred in those years could be irrelevant to the great social change which was going on.”

In this famous work, Ray Strachey records in rich detail women’s struggles for personal, legal, political and social liberties from the late eighteenth century until after the First World War.

It is a balanced and immensely readable record both of human character and collective determination — from the awakenings of individual women to their own uselessness, through the growth of Radicalism and philanthropy to the decade after the vote was won.

Considered one of the great historians of the women’s movement, Ray Strachey draws remarkable portraits of the personalities involved — Harriet Taylor, John Stuart Mill, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Millicent Fawcett, Josephine Butler — and many, many others.

Today, for a new generation wondering how the struggle began, Ray Strachey’s panoramic book provides the only complete account of a great cause — the emancipation of women.

Her daughter, Barbara Strachey, writer and former BBC producer, provides a new preface to this edition.

Ray Strachey (1887-1940) was born into a distinguished American Quaker family. Deeply committed to the Suffrage Movement, a close friend and colleague of the Suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett, she took part in the fight for the vote during the critical years. She was one of the first women to stand for Parliament after the vote was won and became political adviser to Lady Astor, the first women MP. Editor of the Suffragist newspaper The Common Cause, she was deeply committed to the advancement of women, serving on many committees and organizations, and founding the Women’s Employment Federation. A prolific writer and broadcaster, she wrote numerous articles, pamphlets and books, including a notable biography of Millicent Fawcett.

Genres: History, Feminism, Nonfiction

440 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1978

Reviews

[Rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book. I found it very readable and got through it in two days, despite its length and antiquated writing style. Maybe because of it, in the case of the writing style—I do enjoy the way people wrote in this time period. I feel standards have fallen.
It provided, as another reviewer has commented, an excellent overview of the struggle, spanning the years from 1792 to 1928. It didn’t go into much detail but was written from a perspective with the intent to summarize the series of events of many, many years in just one volume. I didn’t mind this, as I’ve read books focusing solely on a period of 15 years or so, covering the militant movement in greater detail, and this bird’s eye perspective was educational and interesting.
A good deal of the suffrage work up to about 1870 or so was new to me, as I know more about American women’s suffrage work from that time period than English women’s. The period covering the years of the war, and the years after the granting of the franchise, were also new and fascinating; the books I’ve read thus far tend to skip over the war years, as the W.S.P.U. declared a “truce” then, and, of course, as the books have tended to focus on the W.S.P.U., after they succeeded in gaining women’s suffrage and disbanded, not much afterwards is explained. A substantial amount of the changes to the law they made, and the new bills they succeeded in passing which chipped away at women’s subordination as encoded in law, was completely fresh knowledge for me, so I really appreciated that Strachey didn’t end the book in 1917. Of course, there is the fact to consider that most of the books I’ve read about women’s suffrage have been published somewhere between 1917 and 1922, so it would be impossible for them to cover the years afterwards…
In any case, this book was interesting! One point I disliked was the way Strachey spoke rather patronizingly and slightly disparagingly of the militant women of the W.S.P.U., who she seemed to find, at times, silly, illogical, over-eager, aggressive, misguided, addicted to adrenaline with their brains turned off, etc. That was annoying, and it makes me wonder what suffrage society(ies?) she was a part of, as I feel most W.S.P.U. women would not speak of themselves in such a manner. My other criticism: Strachey was far too sympathetic to and optimistic about the male politicians (and general men) who were opposing women’s suffrage and women’s rights. I do think it’s important to not be inflammatory and to see their point of view and explain it for educational purposes and to be fair and even, and so forth, but she hardly put a word of angry criticism of them in this book, even when they were so clearly coming from a selfish or condescending, misogynist perspective, and it got a little obnoxious.
For the most part, though, I had no qualms with this book, and I liked the even tone she wrote with, which was suppressed with passion. I would recommend this to anyone interested in learning the clear, logical, chronological order of events, more of an overview than an in-depth, detailed examination. (Strachey talks about this herself in the Preface, where she says the issue wasn’t a dearth of information but a surplus, which made it difficult to fit everything into one volume.)


Quotations:

“The Industrial Revolution began long before the nineteenth century; and all through its course it was accompanied by a decline in the economic importance of women. Their change from partners to parasites was an exceedingly far-reaching social phenomenon, and their collapse from skilled workers to cheap labourers added greatly to the confusions and disasters which accompanied industrial development. As the chance proceeded it wrenched away from women great portions of their traditional work, and thus forced them either to follow it into the labour market, or to sit in idleness at home. And both courses led inevitably to demoralisation and discontent. The well-to-do, whose lot was idleness, grew frivolous, artificial, and absurd; the poor, whose lot was wage-earning, were exploited and overdriven; and both rich and poor believed that this was the order of nature and the predestined way of the world.” (52)

“Yet, in spite of the convention of society, prostitutes were women; and, moreover, all their evils and misfortunes came from this very fact. It was actually because of their sex that they were outcasts, not because of their behaviour. The men who did as they did, and who shared their vice and their degradation, were not dealt with in the same manner, nor held in the same disgust. The double moral standard allowed to men what it forbade to women; and it was from this root that the worst of the evil grew.” (189-90)

John Stuart Mill, on the Contagious Diseases Act: “‘I do not consider (such legislation) justifiable in principle,’ he said, ‘because it appears to me to be opposed to one of the greatest principles of legislation, the security of personal liberty. It appears to me that legislation of this sort takes away that security almost entirely from a particular class of women intentionally, but incidentally and unintentionally, one may say, for all women whatever; inasmuch as it enables a woman to be apprehended by the police on suspicion and taken before a magistrate, and then by that magistrate she is liable to be confined for a term of imprisonment, which may amount, I believe, to six months, for refusing to sign a declaration consenting to be examined.’” (201)

“Mrs Butler and her co-workers were desperately anxious about the result. ‘We have arranged,’ she wrote to her son, ‘for a great meeting of prayer; we shall hold it close to the House of Commons during the whole debate, and all night, if the debate lasts all night. Some of our parliamentary friends counselled this course, saying that it was well that all the world should know with what weapons and in whose name we made war, even if they scoff at the idea, as of course so many do.’ When the night came this prayer-meeting was duly held, and a very strange and moving sight it was. A large hall in the Westminster Palace Hotel was packed with women—ladies in their evening-dresses kneeling beside outcasts from the slums of Westminster, many of them in tears, and all beseeching Heaven to guide their rulers into the paths of justice. Mrs Butler came and went to and fro between this gathering and the House. ‘I felt ready to cry,’ she said, ‘but I did not, for I long ago rejected the old ideal of the division of labour, that “men must work and women must weep.”’ It was no time for tears while there were still words which might be spoken and prayers which might be said. In the meeting room an old lady from America rose from her knees. ‘Tears are good,’ she said, ‘prayers are better, but we should get on better still if behind every tear there was a vote at the ballot-box,’ and all the women in the room agreed with her words.” (217)

“During these years between the passing of the Reform Bill and the close of the century, it became apparent, bit by bit, that the effort to win the suffrage through the Liberal Party alone was unavailing. In spite of the loyalty of a strong section of the suffrage women, in spite of the devoted work of hundreds of others within the Party, in spite of the repeated professions of agreement on the part of the conventions and individual Members and candidates, the Party machine was altogether unmoved, and the Party leaders showed not the faintest sign of giving way. The fear that women would vote Conservative, which had prevailed in 1870, held sway in 1880 and 1890, and an absolute deadlock ensued. Although there were exceptions on both sides, it was roughly true that the Liberals, who professed to believe in giving the votes to women, would not do it because they thought they would lose thereby; and the Conservatives, who were expected to benefit, disliked the principle so much that they would not do it either. Moreover, it was a curious fact that in the Liberal Party, where the rank and file of the members professed to support the claim, the leaders were passionately opposed to it, while in the Conservative Party it was the leaders alone who were friendly; and the women, being voteless, could alter neither situation, but got the worst of it in both cases.” (283)

“Another change, even more vital to the Women’s Movement than the approval of public opinion, was brought about by the war years, and that was the change in the outlook of women themselves. For the first time hundreds of thousands of them had experienced the joys of achievement; they had been of consequence and had done things they felt to be important; they had been encouraged to show enterprise and ambition, and they had been more or less adequately paid. The false and temporary prosperity of the war period had given women a taste of the power of money; the factory women had been better fed, in spite of the food shortage, than in the days when they did ‘women’s work’ in their homes. The married women had had the spending of the separation allowances, and their children were better dressed and in better health than had ever been the case before. They saw what the world was like for men; and neither Act of Parliament nor season of reaction, nor any other thing could thereafter take that knowledge from them.” (349)

“Legal equality is not, of course, the whole aim of the movement. There are aspects of it which are not susceptible to victory by law; there are changes of thought and outlook which even yet have not arrived. There are consequences, too, of the victories already won which have not as yet fully emerged; and, above all, economic equality is still a distant dream. The struggle for these things goes on, and must go on, with the development of the British people. But the main fight is over, and the main victory is won. With education, enfranchisement, and legal equality all conceded, the future of women lies in their own hands; and it has been the fundamental belief of the Women’s Movement that in those hands it is safe.” (384-5)

“The widening of the physical world for women which these changed conditions involve did not really begin before 1890. Some years earlier, as we have seen, games were introduced into the more advanced girls’ schools, but it was not until the early nineties that the idea that grown-up women could move about freely was at all generally accepted; and the emancipating agent in this reform was the bicycle. The women who first began to ride upon this queer machine were thought to be incredibly venturous, and most people also thought them shocking. In the very early days, indeed, when only men’s bicycles were made, the enormity of riding at all was intensified by the fact that it had to be done in Bloomers, and the bold pioneers were freely hotels in the streets. After a time adaptations of the machine were made, so that the voluminous skirts of the period could be heaped up and stowed away, and a perfectly ladylike appearance maintained. The prejudice did not at once diminish, but the achievement was considered worth the persecution, and women persevered. They found in it not only what was then thought to be the exquisite pleasure of rapid motion, but also very great practical convenience. They were no longer prisoners in their own houses; they could spin off, if they chose, as far as six or seven miles away; they could go to the nearest town to do their shopping, and they could visit their friends, and be no longer dependent for these joys upon the convenience of the rest of the family, but only upon their own muscles. It was a wonderful change, and one which was rapidly appreciated by all sorts of women who had no conscious sympathy with the Women’s Movement at all. No doubt it was this emancipating tendency which caused the opposition to be so acute; certainly it was the reason why a deliberate propaganda in favour of the innovation made its appearance, and a little flock of quaint pamphlets urging women to ‘conquer the world on wheels’ remains to bear witness to this vital social change.” (387-8)

Florence Nightingale, in Cassandra in Appendix: “Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity—these three—and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised? Men saw that God punishes for complaining. No, but men are angry with misery. They are irritated with women for not being happy. They take it as a personal offence. To God alone may women complain without insulting Him!” (396)

Florence Nightingale again: “If we do attempt to do nothing in company, what is the system of literary exercise which we pursue? Everybody reads aloud out of their own book or newspaper—or, every five minutes, something is said. And what is it to be ‘read aloud to’? The most miserable exercise of the human intellect. Or rather, is it any exercise at all? It is like lying on one’s back, with one’s hands tied and having liquid poured down one’s throat. Worse than that, because suffocation would immediately ensue and put a stop to this operation. But no suffocation would stop the other.” (402)

[Jess M · Rating 3 out of 5]

A level history coursework core

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Cause" gives a comprehensive picture of the Women's Movement in the UK up to the late 1920s. Ray Strachey is a really good writer and it was easy to see how important this movement was to her and that she took part in it. I think the great advantage of this book is that the author lived through at least a part of the struggle and her passion came across in her writing. "The Cause" is very informative spanning a large period of time and looking at a variety of causes taken up by early feminists. It is amazing to see how far these women came in just a few decades and how hard they had to fight to secure rights we now take as granted. This is a great book to get a broad overview and to get to know the key characters of the movement.

[Anna]

Oh, me. I so wanted to eat this hot potato, not drop it.

It's not that the book is bad, it's just that it has one of those 1970s green hardback covers on it; feels like it's 1000 musty pages long; doesn't fit in my bag handily; and after nine months, I still don't know the "characters." I could have had a whole baby in the time this has been listed in my "Currently Reading" shelf, and I'm still only partially through Chapter 3.

Looks like I'm in the market for an 'Even Shorter History of the Women's Movement in Great Britain'...

[Gio · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book but didn't. The Cause: A Short History of the Women's Movement in Great Britain" really is the shortest history of the Women's Movement in Great Britain I've ever read. So in that respect, the book fulfils its promise.

And that's my problem. I felt that Strachey summarised too much and jumped from one milestone to the next without really explaining how women got there. The writing style was also quite convoluted and old-fashioned. I'd recommend it only to those who want a brief overview and don't mind this writing style.