shopping, her desultory reading, mainly confined to novels, were
surprising in one whose life was so largely given to public causes. Her
greatness was in her courage and devotion, indomitable and
unflinching, deaf to all criticism, prepared to meet all hardships. ...
That she lost the reformer’s quality in her declining years and grew as
intolerant in her reaction as she had been stubborn in her pioneering,
will not be recorded against her. That failing has been a common one
amongst reformers.^17Such articles, including another by Sylvia with the title ‘Mrs. Pankhurst. A
Daughter’s Memories’, helped to fashion a particular representation of the mili-
tant leader, a portrayal written by a daughter who was earning a reputation as a
left-wing writer on social issues, such as the need for a free maternity service.^18
By Christmas 1930, Emmeline Pethick Lawrence was writing to Sylvia:
I wish youcould have written your Mother’s Life, because I feel that
you would have made of it – a work of art. Her life & character present
rare materials for a deeply human story. There are great heights &
depths, marvelous [sic] light, & sombre darkness. Even in her villainies
she is intensely dramatic ... as when she repudiated you & Adela &
again when she expressed extreme horror & reprobation of you in
following the example of Mary Woolstonecraft [sic], Elizabeth Elmy &
many other pioneers of the Woman’s Movement [in becoming preg-
nant while single] ... Her arc of flight, through Liberalism, Socialism,
extreme revolution, to Conservatism is full of interest. If Christabel
ever writes her life, it will be the unutterably dull, ‘Me & Mother’ stuff,
which has fallen absolutely flat, outside the ever diminishing numbers
of devoted followers – nobody is interested in a paragon of wisdom &
conduct. Christabel’s idea of Mother – & also of Herself – is that of the
ultimate triumph of a vindicated Christ returning to rule the world as a
benevolent despot!^19As noted in the Introduction, Sylvia did later publish a life of her mother, in
1935, at about the same time that Christabel completed her manuscript. But
Sylvia’s biography of Emmeline was not widely read. It was her autobiographical
account of the women’s suffrage campaign, The suffragette movement, an intimate
account of persons and ideals, published in 1931, that was her most influential
literary achievement. As observed in the Introduction, in this book Sylvia
presents Emmeline as a failed mother and a failed leader, easily swayed by the
hated Christabel, a view that was not lost on contemporary reviewers who
pointed out that Mrs. Pankhurst is presented as ‘almost a tool’ in Christabel’s
hands, ‘driven by her elder daughter as a ship before the wind’.^20 Christabel, the
separatist feminist who marginalises class and socialism by recruiting middle-
class women into the movement, is damned as the sister who led their mother
NICHE IN HISTORY