In Europe by Geert Mak Read Free Book Online Page B

woman runs onto the track, there is a whirl of bodies, then the horses are past and spectators rush towards a pile of clothing. That is how she entered history. Waving two flags, the narrator says, Emily Davison threw herself in front of the king's horse for the cause of female suffrage. She died four days later.
    I wanted to find out more about her. The British Library, though, contained only a short commemorative volume published shortly after her death, a bijou in a finely tooled case. The frontispiece shows a proud woman in a gown, diploma in hand. She is frowning gravely for the photographer, but obviously capable of breaking into a smile at any moment. That impression is confirmed only a few pages later: Emily loved life, she was generous, enthusiastic and exceptionally cheerful.
    Her story reads like a classic account of radicalisation. And, at the same time, as a nineteenth-century story, a story about the place where two eras clashed.
    Emily Davison came from a good family, but even in early childhood there was something wayward about her. ‘I don't want to be good!’ she often shouted at her nanny. When her parents died she had to leave school. Like many women in her situation she became a governess, but she spent her evening hours studying and so finally left school with exceptional grades. She was at one with the dreams and ambitions of the nineteenth century, but was also brutally confronted with the dark side of that same century: the social pressures, the curtailment of the individual, the double standards, the never-ending conflict between desire and possibility.
    Shortly before Emily was born, John Stuart Mill – prompted by his blue-stocking spouse Harriet Taylor – published
The Subjection of Women
in 1869. The title speaks for itself. The country may have been ruled by a queen, but women in other walks of life had no say whatsoever. A man held absolute sway over his wife's person and her possessions. University degrees were off-limits to women, a situation that continued at Cambridge until 1948. Women frequently earned less than half a man's salary for the same work. Many professions actually barred women from their ranks. Many poor girls turned to whoring to survive.
    But, after 1870, there came a change. Women began making themselves heard on subjects such as education, charity work, health care, mandatory vaccination and prostitution. Starting in 1880, the major political parties established women's organisations, and demonstrations for female suffrage began in 1900. In 1908 a window was shattered at 10 Downing Street; in 1913, one wing of Liberal leader David Lloyd George's mansion was blown up in order to ‘rouse his conscience’. With remarkable speed, women who had been brought up as delicate Victorian china dolls were becoming modern physicians, bookkeepers, civil servants and teachers, and sometimes even dyed-in-the-wool feminists.
    Simple curiosity was what brought Emily Davison into contact with these suffragettes: she had read strange newspaper reports about gatherings of radical women, and she wanted to see them with her own eyes. Before long she had joined their ranks. When a mass demonstration was held on 21 June, 1908, Emily was one of the most enthusiastic organisers.
    It is not clear what drove her; we can only guess. What
is
clear is that she was drawn into a current of political action, demonstrations of solidarity and intense friendships. Rage was not her sole motive. She was deeply convinced, as her female biographer wrote, that ‘she had been called by God not only to work, but also to fight for the cause she had embraced, like a Joan of Arc leading the French Army. Her prayers were always long, and the Bible always lay beside her bed.’ Emily united in herself the contradictions of her day; a hotchpotch of modern militancy and religious romanticism.
    She went further and further for the sake of the cause. On 20 March, 1909, a delegation of women who had demanded to speak to