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370 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2008
3 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Robins
91 books4 followersElizabeth Robins (August 6, 1862 – May 8, 1952) was an actress, playwright, novelist, and suffragette.
Robins realised her income from acting was not stable enough to carry her. While Robins was busy being a successful actress, she had to leave England to look for her brother in Alaska, who had gone missing. Her experiences searching for her brother led her to write her novels, Magnetic North (written in 1904) and Come and Find Me (1908). Before this, she had written novels such as George Mandeville’s Husband (1894), The New Moon (1895), Below the Salt and Other Stories (1896) and several others under the name of C. E. Raimond. She explained her use of a pseudonym as a means of keeping her acting and writing careers separate but gave it up when the media reported that Robins and Raimond were the same. She enjoyed a long career as a fiction and nonfiction writer.
In her biography of Elizabeth Robins, Staging a Life, Angela John says, “It is possible to trace in Elizabeth’s writing from 1890s onwards an emerging feminist critique, clearly, but only partly, influenced by the psychological realism of Ibsen, which would find most confident expression in 1907 in her justly celebrated novel The Convert”. Robins’ main character, Vida, speaks to “male politicians and social acquaintances”, something very different from what the women of Robins’ time did – something very reminiscent of one of Ibsen’s ‘new women.’ Adapted from this novel is, Elizabeth Robins’ most famous play, Votes for Women! The first play to bring the “street politics of women’s suffrage to the stage”, Votes for Women! led to a flourish of suffrage drama. Elizabeth Robins first attended “open-air meetings of the suffrage union” when the Women’s Social and Political Union moved its headquarters from Manchester to London in 1906. It was then that she “abandoned” the current play she was writing and worked to complete the very first suffrage drama. “The more Robins became immersed in the work, the more she became converted to the cause”.
(from Wikipedia)
Robins realised her income from acting was not stable enough to carry her. While Robins was busy being a successful actress, she had to leave England to look for her brother in Alaska, who had gone missing. Her experiences searching for her brother led her to write her novels, Magnetic North (written in 1904) and Come and Find Me (1908). Before this, she had written novels such as George Mandeville’s Husband (1894), The New Moon (1895), Below the Salt and Other Stories (1896) and several others under the name of C. E. Raimond. She explained her use of a pseudonym as a means of keeping her acting and writing careers separate but gave it up when the media reported that Robins and Raimond were the same. She enjoyed a long career as a fiction and nonfiction writer.
In her biography of Elizabeth Robins, Staging a Life, Angela John says, “It is possible to trace in Elizabeth’s writing from 1890s onwards an emerging feminist critique, clearly, but only partly, influenced by the psychological realism of Ibsen, which would find most confident expression in 1907 in her justly celebrated novel The Convert”. Robins’ main character, Vida, speaks to “male politicians and social acquaintances”, something very different from what the women of Robins’ time did – something very reminiscent of one of Ibsen’s ‘new women.’ Adapted from this novel is, Elizabeth Robins’ most famous play, Votes for Women! The first play to bring the “street politics of women’s suffrage to the stage”, Votes for Women! led to a flourish of suffrage drama. Elizabeth Robins first attended “open-air meetings of the suffrage union” when the Women’s Social and Political Union moved its headquarters from Manchester to London in 1906. It was then that she “abandoned” the current play she was writing and worked to complete the very first suffrage drama. “The more Robins became immersed in the work, the more she became converted to the cause”.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 31, 2025
'Hitherto, public opinion has been man's opinion.'
An assortment of articles and speeches on women's suffrage by acclaimed actress and activist Elizabeth Robins, interspersed and tied together by a history of the movement from 1905-1912.
This period saw the first arrests, the publication of Votes for Women newspaper, the mass rally in Hyde Park of June 1908, the stone-throwing, the hunger strikes, and increased militancy after the government's prevarication over the Conciliation Bill.
Robins founded the Women Writers' Suffrage League and admired the Pankhursts, who appear (and disappear in the case of Christabel!) frequently in these pages. As you would expect, the author's account of the suffrage movement is entirely partial, though no less valuable from a historical standpoint.
As both a Suffragette and a writer Robins was keen to stress that it was not just the vote which had been hitherto denied to women, their voice had also been absent. I very much liked her inspiring and poetic message to all women writers to notice how 'you are in that position for which Chaucer has been so envied by his brother poets, when they say he found the English language with the dew upon it.'
In her opening essay she rued the perception that the movement wanted to 'make out all women to be Angels of Light and all men to be Princes of Darkness.' A commendably inclusive observation. She then set about summarising the relations between men and women since the dawn of civilization, producing a veritable catalogue of unfavorable generalisations about the male character, placing them rather guiltily alongside comparably favourable female attitudes. Oh, the irony!
Not that I disagreed with most of what she said.
The momentum the movement obtained in these years looks unstoppable in hindsight. Robins was smart enough to realise that the more organised the opposition the more powerful the cause: 'As a sign of the waking-up of the hitherto politically inert mass of women, the "Anti" Society was welcomed by the far-sighted among Suffragists.'
The opposition only really coalesced after the Suffragettes became purposely militant. Robins herself had been against such tactics, but she noticed their efficacy and soon became an advocate, or at least an apologist. This passage from one of her speeches after the stones started flying is exceptionally prescient:
'Why, if so-called "militant tactics" are good tactics, were they not employed before? It may be argued that they are good precisely because they are employed only after other means have failed. They say (I do not know upon how good authority) that a young Suffragist being interrupted in the middle of her speech at a mass meeting by the question:
If these methods are advancing the Cause, why had they not been tried earlier, answered briskly, "Because I was at school."
There is more than audacity in the retort.'
That said, some of Robins' defence of militancy I found less than convincing, such as in this speech delivered at the Albert Hall on March 28th, 1912:
"Those who love law and order owe more than they are aware to the Militant leaders. You know the acts the leaders have sanctioned. You do not know the deeds they have prevented."
Can you imagine how outraged the Women's Social and Political Union would have been if this sentence had been uttered instead by Mr. Asquith with the word 'Police' substituted for the word 'Militant?'
There never is any justification for violence except self-defence, especially through veiled threats of greater violence.
In all other respects this is a brilliant book.
An assortment of articles and speeches on women's suffrage by acclaimed actress and activist Elizabeth Robins, interspersed and tied together by a history of the movement from 1905-1912.
This period saw the first arrests, the publication of Votes for Women newspaper, the mass rally in Hyde Park of June 1908, the stone-throwing, the hunger strikes, and increased militancy after the government's prevarication over the Conciliation Bill.
Robins founded the Women Writers' Suffrage League and admired the Pankhursts, who appear (and disappear in the case of Christabel!) frequently in these pages. As you would expect, the author's account of the suffrage movement is entirely partial, though no less valuable from a historical standpoint.
As both a Suffragette and a writer Robins was keen to stress that it was not just the vote which had been hitherto denied to women, their voice had also been absent. I very much liked her inspiring and poetic message to all women writers to notice how 'you are in that position for which Chaucer has been so envied by his brother poets, when they say he found the English language with the dew upon it.'
In her opening essay she rued the perception that the movement wanted to 'make out all women to be Angels of Light and all men to be Princes of Darkness.' A commendably inclusive observation. She then set about summarising the relations between men and women since the dawn of civilization, producing a veritable catalogue of unfavorable generalisations about the male character, placing them rather guiltily alongside comparably favourable female attitudes. Oh, the irony!
Not that I disagreed with most of what she said.
The momentum the movement obtained in these years looks unstoppable in hindsight. Robins was smart enough to realise that the more organised the opposition the more powerful the cause: 'As a sign of the waking-up of the hitherto politically inert mass of women, the "Anti" Society was welcomed by the far-sighted among Suffragists.'
The opposition only really coalesced after the Suffragettes became purposely militant. Robins herself had been against such tactics, but she noticed their efficacy and soon became an advocate, or at least an apologist. This passage from one of her speeches after the stones started flying is exceptionally prescient:
'Why, if so-called "militant tactics" are good tactics, were they not employed before? It may be argued that they are good precisely because they are employed only after other means have failed. They say (I do not know upon how good authority) that a young Suffragist being interrupted in the middle of her speech at a mass meeting by the question:
If these methods are advancing the Cause, why had they not been tried earlier, answered briskly, "Because I was at school."
There is more than audacity in the retort.'
That said, some of Robins' defence of militancy I found less than convincing, such as in this speech delivered at the Albert Hall on March 28th, 1912:
"Those who love law and order owe more than they are aware to the Militant leaders. You know the acts the leaders have sanctioned. You do not know the deeds they have prevented."
Can you imagine how outraged the Women's Social and Political Union would have been if this sentence had been uttered instead by Mr. Asquith with the word 'Police' substituted for the word 'Militant?'
There never is any justification for violence except self-defence, especially through veiled threats of greater violence.
In all other respects this is a brilliant book.
Displaying 1 of 1 review