"The sunset of mankind?" Well, H.G. Wells was a science fiction writer. Women certainly saw no such ebbing. After all, was not the British Empire ruled for generations by a woman- Victoria? But, no longer would women take a backseat, so toi speak, in Britain or in the New World. Female authors wrote best0sellers, but the remarkable achievement that turned around the thought of women as The Second Sex were the radical feminists- especially the Pankhursts, Emmeline and her two daughters, Christabel and Sylvia. "In 1889, Emmeline Pankhurst with her daughters founded the Women's Franchise League. This organization won the vote for women in elections for local offices in 1894. Emmeline Pankhurst held several local offices. After taking a major role in founding the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903" (Lewis, 2009, para. 4).
It would be sometime before women, such as Lady Astor, would make a name for themselves in Parliament. But, some thirty years before the turn of the century, women's legal rights were issued in a small book written by Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon which caused such a nationwide uproar which was silenced only by an act of Parliament called the British Married Woman's Property Act. Ms. Bodichon claimed that if a woman has to pay taxes, she ought to have the same rights as men who pay taxes. And things were certainly looking up for British women writers- many Americans may not readily recognize Virginia Woolf, but Agatha Christy, Dorothy Sayers, Josephine Tey, Rebecca West? Match that, H G. Wells and your "doomed mankind" delusions!
Lews, J. J. (2009): "Emmeline Pankhurst" accessd Nov 6, 2009 on
womenshistory.about.com/.../suffrage1900/Women_s_Suffrage_
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