PEACEFUL CITIZEN
Emily Davison’s response reveals something of the wide range of connections she had,
and something of how she came by her knowledge of Canadian politics. Her second
paragraph effectively dismantles “Peaceful Citizen’s” claim to superior knowledge,
while the next four paragraphs respond individually to other points of the letter
Davison chooses to engage: the hurtful adjectives of demoniacal and childish, the
notion that what it is to be “womanly” is actually known; the facts of how the suffrage
movement has refrained from militancy, why it resumed militancy, and how the
Liberal Government cruelly over-reacted to the woman suffrage supporters who went
in deputation to Parliament, exercising their constitutional rights. Along the way
she does offer two partial definitions of ideal women: the educated young women of
Eastern Canada suggest that education and knowledge are essential to a “womanly”
woman, and the hard work equally expected of men and women in the West of Canada
suggests that “womanly” women are those who work as equals alongside men to
accomplish mutual goals.
September 13, 1912, To the Editor of The Newcastle Daily Journal
“CANADA AND MILITANT SUFFRAGETTES”
Longhorsley, Northumberland
Sir,– My interest has been greatly aroused by some of the statements made
in a letter which appeared in your columns of September 9th in answer to mine
on ‘Canada and Militant Suffragettes.’ The writer in question prefers as do
most of our opponents, to remain anonymous, adopting the nom de plume
of ‘Peaceful Citizen.’ The word “Citizen’ shows me that the writer is of the male
sex, for women here are not acknowledged as citizens. Whether he would be
so ‘peaceful’ if he were expected and forced to obey laws to which his consent
had by no means been asked, or if he had to pay taxes without a voice in the
spending of them, is by no means certain.
‘Peaceful Citizen’ writes with high tone as one who has lived in Canada,
and apparently takes my ignorance and unwariness for granted. I am not so
unwise as to write of that which I do not know. I have both friends and relations
in Canada, and receive papers and journals of all kinds regularly from that
country, which keep me well posted as to Canadian affairs. Hence,
when ‘Peaceful Citizen’ ventures to make so foolish a statement as
that ‘Canadian people have absolutely no grievance against the Government,’ I
exclaim at his own guilelessness, and see, moreover, that women have more
need of the vote in Canada than I thought, as apparently there, even as here,
they do not count as ‘people.’ I read constantly in my Canadian papers that
Canadian women are very discontened [sic] with the present state of the laws
with regard ‘to dower, the right to homestead, etc.’ (I quote from the Western
Home Monthly for August).
When my opponent so far lets zeal outrun discretion as to put in
juxtaposition two such strangely inapposite epithets as ‘demoniacal and childish’
I feel compelled out of very pity to remind him that courtesy and coolness are two
absolutely indispensable corollaries to success in argument.
‘Peaceful Citizen’ states that ‘Canadian women are more womanly than
some of our English women.’ Here again he dares the perils of rash and
unthinking assertion, for who in this part of the world knows what a ‘womanly
woman’ is, seeing that women have hitherto been cribbed, cabined, and confined
into male ideas of what is womanly, and the sex is no more what it naturally
might be than is the tiny puling little lap-dog in any way to be taken as
representative of that fine animal, the dog! We know now-a-days how grave is
the crime of cramping the child who shows marked ability in one or more
directions into a narrow and often entirely unsuitable routine! At present we give
our boys every possible chance for developing their special talents, whilst we are
only just beginning to see that wisdom demands that the same opportunity must
be given to the girls. As to Canadian women, I have met several. I have found
by experience, which has been supported by those who know, that the Eastern
Canadian girl is as well educated, independent, and self-assertive as her
excellent United States sister, whilst the Western Canadian girl appears to be
expected to work has hard as any man, without the man’s civic privileges. In
each case they seem to be fully worthy of the vote.
‘Peaceful Citizen’ deplores our tactics during the ‘last two years’ and
thereby displays the cloven hoof of ignorance of the movement. During 1910 and
1911 the militants carefully preserved a truce to give the Conciliation Bill a fair
chance; nay, more, they worked might and main ‘Constitutionally’ till Mr. Asquith
destroyed it by his adult suffrage proposition. Then, and only then, was militancy
resumed, beginning with stone-throwing and culminating when our prisoners had
been treated in the most illogical and barbarous fashion, in some more serious
episodes, all of which are quite recent events. ‘Peaceful Citizen,’ of course,
should have said ‘during the last few months.’
‘Peaceful Citizen’ evidently out-Herod’s Herod in his ideas of punishment,
when he says, ‘the Government should have adopted drastic measures at the
commencement,’ when most people know well that the earliest sentences were
exorbitantly severe, considering that in those days for doing so Constitutional
and legal an act as merely going on a deputation to Parliament, women were
given such wicked sentences as one month, six weeks, and three months’
imprisonment. What he apparently does not realize is that Draconic [sic] measures
only make us the more determined, as they prove the need of greater sanity and
morality in the laws on the Statute Book.
Sept. 11, 1912
EMILY WILDING DAVISON