materialistic.^40 Nevertheless, I contend that in regard to a feminist world-view,
the ideas expressed by Emmeline Pankhurst were more akin to those expressed
by radical rather than socialist feminists in Second Wave Feminism.
My interpretation of Emmeline Pankhurst’s life then will differ in many
aspects from that offered in the dominant narratives that we have considered so
far and continues the questioning about the ways in which we socially construct
and culturally produce stories about feminists in the past. And since I am a
professional historian, it is an interpretation that is grounded in the extant
sources, especially the primary sources, rather than being a purely literary
fiction. Where, as indicated earlier, I have found contradictory statements about
Emmeline Pankhurst, I have consulted a range of other sources, so that
accounts can be compared, and have often indicated this in the footnotes. But
ultimately, as with all biographers, my interpretation of Emmeline Pankhurst’s
life will be based on my ‘feeling’ about her, after a decade or more in the
sources. While most biographers of women favour a chronological, narrative
form, which is the form I adopt, I also draw upon other popular approaches
which place the individual in a web of friendships or offer a thematic focus that
present the shifting identities of their subject.^41 Overall, it may be useful, as Liz
Stanley suggests, to see the production of biography as a ‘kaleidoscope’ where
each time you look you see something rather different, composed of the same
elements but in a new configuration, rather than as a ‘microscope’ effect where
the more information you collect about your subject, the closer one is to ‘the
truth’.^42
These considerations are particularly pertinent when considering the writing
of the life story of Emmeline Pankhurst. Emmeline Pankhurst was a woman of
extraordinary beauty, a fighter for the women’s cause in which she passionately
believed, a charismatic leader and speaker who inspired the fiercest devotion
and charmed most of those who heard her. Yet many who knew her commented
on her contrasts and contradictions. She could be gentle and fiery, idealistic and
realistic, creative and destructive, kind and ruthless, democratic and autocratic,
invincible and vulnerable, courageous and afraid.
While the views of her contemporaries will be important sources to consider,
we also need to find the voice of Emmeline herself, her own subjectivity, her
own sense of her experiences, her own self-representation. However, since she
was very much a woman of action, a doer who considered herself incompetent
with a pen, she left few articles, papers or personal letters, and those that are
extant are scattered in various collections. She had no desire to write her auto-
biography but was eventually persuaded to tell her story when she was
recuperating, in 1913, from one of her many imprisonments; an American femi-
nist journalist, Rheta Childe Dorr, compiled the life story from interviews with
Emmeline and from suffragette literature. My own story, published late in 1914,
was written in haste, mainly for propaganda purposes; it contains some factual
errors, indicating that Emmeline had neither the time nor the inclination to
check the proofs.^43 Consequently, some historians have dismissed it as a source
INTRODUCTION