Subject: Ölke edebiyyat tarixi

Student: Mammadova Nuray

Teacher: İrada Alasgarova
Topic: Changes in the position of
women in English society in the
20th century
Grupe:101
CHANGES IN THE POSITION OF WOMEN IN
ENGLISH SOCIETY IN THE 20TH CENTURY
History of women in the
United Kingdom covers
the social, cultural and
political roles of women
in Britain over the last two
millennia.
Women in the Edwardian Eraedit
The Edwardian era, from the 1890s to the
First World War saw middle-class women
breaking out of the Victorian limitations.
Women had more employment
opportunities and were more active. Many
served worldwide in the British Empire or
in Protestant missionary societies.
As middle-class women rose in status they increasingly supported demands for a political voice.
In 1903, Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union, a suffrage advocacy
organisation. While WSPU was the most visible suffrage group, it was only one of many, such as the
Women's Freedom League and the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) led by
Millicent Garrett Fawcett. In Wales the suffragists women were attacked as outsiders and were usually
treated with rudeness and often violence when they demonstrated or spoke publicly. The idea of Welshness
was by then highly masculine because of its identification with labouring in heavy industry and mining and
with militant union action.
The radical protests steadily became more violent,
and included heckling, banging on doors,
smashing shop windows, burning mailboxes, and
arson of unoccupied buildings. Emily Davison, a
WSPU member, unexpectedly ran onto the track
during the 1913 Epsom Derby and died under the
King's horse. These tactics produced mixed results
of sympathy and alienation. As many protesters
were imprisoned and went on hunger-strike, the
Liberal government was left with an embarrassing
situation. From these political actions, the
suffragists successfully created publicity around
their institutional discrimination and sexism.
Historians generally argue that the first stage of
the militant suffragette movement under the
Pankhursts in 1906 had a dramatic mobilising
effect on the suffrage movement. Women were
thrilled and supportive of an actual revolt in the
streets; the membership of the militant WSPU and
the older NUWSS overlapped and was mutually
supportive.
However a system of publicity, historian Robert Ensor argues,
had to continue to escalate to maintain its high visibility in the
media. The hunger strikes and force-feeding did that. However
the Pankhursts refused any advice and escalated their tactics.
They turned to systematic disruption of Liberal Party
meetings as well as physical violence in terms of damaging
public buildings and arson. This went too far, as the
overwhelming majority of moderate suffragists pulled back
and refused to follow because they could no longer defend the
tactics. They increasingly repudiated the extremists as an
obstacle to achieving suffrage, saying the militant suffragettes
were now aiding the antis, and many historians agree.
Historian Searle says the methods of the suffragettes did
succeed in damaging the Liberal party but failed to advance
the cause of woman suffrage. When the Pankhursts decided to
stop the militancy at the start of the war, and enthusiastically
support the war effort, the movement split and their leadership
role ended. Suffrage did come four years later, but the
feminist movement in Britain permanently abandoned the
militant tactics that had made the suffragettes famous.
Edwardian Britain had large numbers of male and female
domestic servants, in both urban and rural areas. Men relied
on working-class women to run their homes smoothly, and
employers often looked to these working-class women for
sexual partners. Servant were provided with food, clothing,
housing, and a small wage, and lived in a self-enclosed social
system inside the mansion. The number of domestic servants
fell in the Edwardian period due to a declining number of
young people willing to be employed in this area.