July 16, 2022 • 36 mins
Women had been excluded from voting in ancient Greece, republican Rome, and in emerging European and North American democracies. By the mid 19th century, many had had enough and began demanding suffrage; the right to vote in political elections. While some worked within existing systems, others attacked with amazing savvy and ferocity, resulting not only in stunning, even shocking visuals, but eventually great change. This week, Christine and JJ examine the visuals of Women's suffrage, from the media-friendly uniforms and violent actions of militant British Suffragettes, to political marches in the US, and monuments to subversive Pink Tea parties in Western Canada.
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JJ Hunt (00:03):
Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ
Hunt.
Christine Malec (00:27):
Hi, I'm Christine Malec.
JJ Hunt (00:28):
And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to me, where
the visuals of current eventsand the world around us get
hashed out in description richconversations.
Christine Malec (00:47):
In previous episodes, we've talked about
protests and the visualsassociated with them. And we're
going to do that today. But in adifferent way, we're going to
look at a historical protestmovement, the movement for
women's suffrage, the right tovote. And, of course, there's a
few qualifiers here, which iswe're talking about, largely the
(01:10):
Western world. And when we givedates and things, because we're
going to sort of tell the storyand talk about the visuals, it's
really important to know thatthis is not universal suffrage.
So when women get the vote insomewhere, like, you know,
Australia, or the United Statesor Canada, it's not all women,
(01:33):
it doesn't it's only whitewomen. So in the States, black
women couldn't vote till the1960s. And in Britain, when
women first got the vote, youhave to be over 30. And in
Australia, it did not includeAboriginal women. So when we
talk about the successes of thismovement, it's really important
to remember that it wasn't auniversal success right away. Of
(01:58):
course, the other challenge isthe visuals that this movement
was happening in the late 1800s,early 1900s. And so our visuals
may be a little spotty. Today,it's easy to look back and see
this struggle as an obviousstruggle with an obvious right
(02:20):
answer. And it's it's acompleted protest movement. But
at the time, that was not true.
And it's sometimes said thatprotests are the language of the
unheard. And I think there'svalue in that. And so, at the
time, the protests that werehappening for women, by women to
get the vote for women were verycontroversial. And I think that
(02:43):
it's a really useful thing tokeep in mind how courageous one
would have to be for women whohad typically been trained to be
passive and told that women thatwe were not smart enough to
engage that we didn't belong inthe public sphere. For me the
(03:04):
courage that they had thosewomen had to stand up and say,
Ah, that's, that's not cool. wasan unimaginable, really. And so
one of the things we're going totalk about as we do descriptions
of cert of particular women whoare relevant in the movement, is
(03:25):
I've asked JJ to give a littlefocus on clothing. And the
reason is not because I'm afashionista, but it's because I
think the clothes, the clothing,women were expected to wear is
one easily accessible metric forthe expectations that were put
(03:45):
on women for femininity for lackof easy movement for decorative
newness for proscribed behavior.
And so when we get todescriptions of specific women,
I think that's going to bereally useful. For me, where I
first started learning aboutthis movement was the movement
(04:08):
in Britain to get women to vote.
And so this started in the mid1800s, with the suffragist
movement. And these were verysmart, thoughtful women who
believed that throughnegotiation and reason, they
could persuade the governmentthat women should have the right
to vote, but it didn't reallywork went on and on and on. And
eventually, some women in thatmovement got very disillusioned.
(04:34):
And they decided that deeds weremore important than words. And
this is where some of theprotests started from was this
idea that nobody's reallylistening to us and so, protests
became surprisingly flashy. Sothe suffragists that kind of big
(04:58):
came branded as suffragettes inan attempt to disparage them in
the media and but in in mediasavvy fashion, these women said,
hey, that's cool name, we'regoing to co opt that and we're
going to use it. And so I thinkit's fair to say that the
suffragettes were incrediblysavvy in terms of how to use
(05:18):
media on spectacle. And so JJ,what visuals Did you find to to
illustrate that? Yeah,
JJ Hunt (05:26):
it was it's really interesting to switch from
suffragist to suffragette at is,is profound. And the way the
suffragettes were smart andstrategic about the visuals of
the movement, that it wasimportant to them to stand out
to create spectacle, and stay onthe front pages of newspapers.
(05:47):
So they were really intentionalabout the visuals of the
movement. So one of the firstthings they did was they came up
with colors, they came up withthe colors of the movement,
which were purple, white, andgreen, purple was to represent
loyalty. White was to representpurity or virtue of the
movement, and green was torepresent hope. And these colors
(06:09):
were used in in painted postersand on signs and on the sashes
that they wore when they wereprotesting. They even use them
in their dress code. They wanteda dress code for the movement,
in part to visually demonstratesolidarity, right? When you see
a group of people all wearingthe same coordinated uniform.
(06:30):
It's visually very, veryimpressive sighted people often
associate that kind ofcoordination with a seriousness
with with with unity. That's whymilitary possessions always
feature soldiers in matchinguniforms, the suffragettes they
had been depicted in the mediaby the opposition as grotesque
(06:50):
hags, these horrendouscharacters harridans. These
these images that had been putout in the media of you know,
cartoonish, horrific caricaturesof suffragettes were incredibly
degrading, and even racist. I'vegot an image here, it's a
postcard from 1909 that wasdistributed, that has on the
(07:15):
front of that the entire imageis just a cartoon image, a
caricature of what is supposedto be a suffragette. This person
has outrageously large lips,pointed teeth, one kind of
pointed thing right in themiddle of the teeth, a very wide
flat nose, kind of bulging eyes,and like the sneering kind of,
(07:37):
frankly, ape like animal lookinglike really incredibly racist.
This is the idea of these arethe women women who are who look
like this. These are the womenwho who think they have the
right to be equal and get thevote this horrendous, very
unfeminist and very grotesquecreatures. So to counter this,
(08:00):
the suffragettes were reallyintentional about presenting
themselves as very femininequote, unquote feminine in line
with the styles and fashions ofthe day, and yet extremely media
savvy so photographs that werepublished in newspapers at the
time were either in black andwhite, or sepia toned. sepia
chemical process leaves imageswith like hints of brown and
(08:21):
mustard yellow instead of pureblack and white, and
photographers and editors ofnewspapers, looked for images
that had contrast for the frontcover of their newspaper. So all
of these different things theway they had already been
presented the ideas about whatnewspaper photographers and
editors would want. They pulledall of this together and they
created a uniform. Women whowere participating in marches
(08:44):
wore long, white, fashionabledresses, with white hats that
had wide brims, often toppedwith white [flowers], and then
they had white sashes acrosstheir torsos trimmed in green
and purple and those red votesfor women. And the white dresses
really stood out in these blackand white photos, especially
(09:07):
when compared to the darkerclothing that most of the men
were wearing. Right. The men arewearing dark wool coats, dark
wool caps, dark top hats, andthe uniforms of the police
officers right the policeofficers who are harassing them
and arresting them. They arealso in dark uniforms with these
dark bell shaped hats. And sothey were really they stood out
(09:28):
in photos in the purples andgreens by the way that were used
in their signs and their sashesand their banners and whatnot.
purples and greens really stoodout well in both black and white
and sepia toned images. Not allcolors do some colors get more
washed out but green and purple.
They stay vibrant. And I've gotsome photo examples here from
newspapers. I got one picturehere. Black and white photo of a
(09:48):
parade of women in long whitedresses, these white hats
marching down the middle of thestreet. They're kind of marching
from our upper right down towardour lower left. And they are
flanked on both the far side inthe near side of the street by
men in dark suits and coats. Andwow, this like column of women
in white. And again, like ankleto shoulder, wrist to neck, like
(10:10):
all of their body is covered inwhite clothing with these white
wide brimmed hats. Another photois a small group of women that
sitting atop a carriage that'sbeing pulled through a huge
crowd of people by a singlehorse. The horse is dark, the
men in the crowd are in darkclothing, the police that are
there, they're in dark uniforms.
(10:32):
And then high above them all isthe woman sitting at the front
of the carriage with the horsesrains, long white skirt, what
looks like a white blazer, andshe's got on a white hat with a
wide brim that's almost as wideas her shoulders, and she glows
like a beacon of light in a darksea. So smart with this uniform.
Christine Malec (10:54):
This isn't supposed to be a history lesson,
but women in England did get thevote in 1919. And I remember
when I was reading about this,they stopped advocating full
stop in 1914 to contribute tothe war effort. And so it's not
that they were insensitive towhat was going on in the rest of
the world. But before that time,they did things like arson,
(11:17):
yelling rocks at at Parliamentand very disruptive things that
even today, we would go ooh,that's but at that, I just can't
overstate how, how radical Thismust have seemed in that world
in the world of you know, theearly 1900s. And so can we talk
(11:38):
about Emily Davison and what shedid?
JJ Hunt (11:41):
Yeah, I mean, this time this switch. And you're right,
there are a couple of kind ofkey moments, one being the 1914,
where they switched to thefocusing on the war effort. But
even before then there was thisreal significant protest
strategy that changed and thatkind of led to Emily Davison
(12:03):
becoming the, you know, theadvocate and the militant that
she was. So before November 181910, the suffragettes had been
having these big long marches,these big parades, they were out
in public, and they were makingsure that they were getting on
the covers of newspapers byclashing with police by
(12:24):
protesting and clashing withpolice. And then on November 18
1910, a day that became known asBlack Friday, the suffragettes
were protesting at ParliamentSquare, and they were surrounded
by men, surrounded by police,and there was a riot. And 50
women were physically andsexually assaulted by police in
(12:45):
this riot. And so for their ownsafety, they needed to change
tactics. And instead that's whenthey switched to this campaign
of property destruction ofarson. There are newspaper
photos that show stores withcracked and smashed front
windows, these the big displaywindow panes that face the Main
(13:05):
Street on an old Victoriancommercial street, telephone
wires were cut, they torched andburn down buildings. I've got an
image here of a tea house in KewGardens that was destroyed by
suffragettes. And the buildingis nothing but a few charred
sticks, like the entire buildingwas absolutely burned to the
(13:26):
ground. And one of the moreextreme suffragettes, who was
part of this very, very militantgroup was Emily Davison. She
report purportedly beat a manwith a horse whip, having
mistaken him for politician thatshe had a serious gripe with.
She started burning downmailboxes. These are the famous
(13:48):
British Red post boxes, they'rekind of chest high red metal
tubes with rounded tops in theirdifferent configurations. But at
the time, they were more or lessthese tubes, very sturdy metal
mailboxes. And I believe shestarted by packing the mailboxes
with oil soaked rags and thenlike tossing in a match. And
then the idea caught on withinthe movement and small bombs
(14:12):
were later used by others toblow up these post boxes. Emily
Davison was arrested many, manytimes. She she went she went on
hunger strikes while in prison.
She was force fed through thenose, which was a torture that
was perpetrated on women inparticular who were who were
protesting with hunger strikes,extremely painful way to force
(14:35):
feed someone and so to toprotest this treatment, she
actually threw herself from aprison balcony in a suicide
attempt, hoping to drawattention to the torture the
idea being if people saw howhorrendous this was that someone
actually would rather end theirown life than submit to this
(14:56):
torture than that then thepractice would end She survived
the end of Emily Davidson'scareer as a militant came in
1913. With the Epsom Derby isthis a story that you're
familiar with Chris?
Christine Malec (15:12):
I'm actually not familiar with it.
JJ Hunt (15:15):
This wasn't something that I had heard of before
either until doing research forthis episode. So that 1913 the
Epsom Derby is a is a horserace, one of the most important
and storied races in the, youknow, British sporting calendar,
certainly at the time 500,000people in attendance at the
derby in 1913. And King Georgethe fifth was there in support
(15:39):
of his horse who was enteredinto the race. And so Emily
Davison went didn't dress inwhite dressed all in black, so
that she was kind of moreincognito. And she got herself
into position at the crowdedinner track. So the inside
track, you could you could youknow, before the race began,
obviously, get across and youcould be at the inside track and
(16:00):
she got herself right to therailing of the inside track. And
the railing is of just a verysimple chest high simple bar
with continuous rail supportedby posts every five feet or so.
And she got a spot right at thefinal corner. This is called
Tottenham corner. And the cornerwas in clear view of the cameras
(16:22):
that were set up to film therace. So the cameras are set up
across the track as the horseswould round this final corner,
big moment in the race. Andthere's footage of this this
moment and what happens is thefirst cluster of horses rounds
the corner and races by and thenyou can see across the track in
(16:43):
the from this crowd, Davisonducks under the railing and she
waits for the first pack to tomove by and she finds a small
gap between the packs of horses.
She steps out from the rail ontothe track directly in the path
of the king's horse. And thiswhole action from when she she
slips under and steps out infront of the king's horses,
(17:06):
maybe three seconds tops. Ithappens very, very quickly. Like
I said, she's all dressed inblack, not white, so it's a
little bit harder to see her,especially in this grainy black
and white footage that's dottedwith watermarks and very fine
hairs. But she steps out intothe track and she's holding in
front of her a small object andwhat it is is a purple, white
and green flag the flag of themovement and the king's horse
(17:29):
slams into her at full speed andknocks her back at sensor
absolutely tumbling. It's trulyone of the most violent things
I've ever seen on film, thehorse falls to one side and
skids along the dirt track. Therider of the horse flips into
the air completely out of frame.
(17:52):
And she tumbled like as she gothit she just what like
absolutely flipped head overheels several times. And she
actually died in hospital fourdays later of her wounds.
Photographs of fanned alizedproperty had appeared in lots of
newspapers, artist renderings ofwomen committing those acts of
(18:13):
violence had been you know, madeand shown to the public. But
this was the first time thatthere was footage of a woman
engaged in an act of extremeviolence for the cause. And in
fact, I've got a I got a thefront cover of The Daily sketch
which was a tabloid newspaper inBritain at the time. And it's
got a photograph of like a fullyou know, paper wide photograph
(18:38):
of this moment with most of thehorses racing off a you know
toward the finish line. But onetangle of one fallen horse with
this Emily's body just kind oftangled up near the this fallen
horse and and the headline readsdeath of Emily Davison who
(18:58):
stopped the king's Derby horseand is the first woman to give
her life for votes for women.
Christine Malec (19:05):
And I know the the force feeding you refer to.
It's very difficult to to talkabout but I've I've I know a
little bit about it. It was donewith funnels and hideous torture
and it it was used in the UnitedStates to specially I believe
for women who were advocatingfor access to birth control and
(19:26):
who resorted to hunger strikesin prison and it had long
lasting health. Healthconsequences chest in fact,
chronic lung infections chestinfections. Yeah, lots lots of
courage that it took for thesewomen to achieve what to us
seems so unquestioning and basicthe right to vote. Can we talk
(19:47):
about the United States there'sdefinitely women's names are so
well known. Susan B. AnthonyLucy Stone, what images were you
able to find from the movementin The United States.
JJ Hunt (20:01):
So I've got some portrait images, some portrait
photographs of of a couple ofkey folks, I can describe them
and then maybe we can talk a bitabout images from the protests
in the United States as well. Sothe classic photograph of Susan
B Anthony that is showneverywhere it's she's an older
women in this in thisphotograph, light skinned woman.
(20:21):
hair parted down the middle andkind of pulled back she's seated
and gazing off kind of past ourleft shoulder. She's got a stern
expression straight line for herthin lips. She's wearing small
round wireframe glasses. Andshe's wearing a like a black
silky looking top of a dress.
You can't see the bottom half ofthe dress she's seated and
(20:46):
that's not in frame. But the tophalf of this dress is black and
silky. And it's got a very highcolor for I believe what would
be the shirt underneath it lookslike a lacy pattern shirt. I'm
guessing that it's a black laceon top of an another white
shirt. So this is a garment withlots and lots of layers, outer
black silk, and then under thata black lace and then under that
(21:10):
a white dress or like a whiteshirt and some of that kind of
lace and White comes out at theat the cuffs and you can see her
hands are in front of her andand the skin on her hands is
quite wrinkly. You can see manyof the veins in her hands.
That's the classic image ofSusan B Anthony Lucy Stone. One
of the images that pops up ofher quite often. She's a younger
(21:33):
woman again light skin tone.
Again center parted hair withkind of heavier down by the ears
so covers the center part hair,dark hair comes down and covers
the ears in a very smooth almostbowl shape. But But frames her
face instead of going you knowcalled no bangs. So it doesn't
(21:56):
come across her forehead so highforehead, fairly substantial
nose, fuller lips than Susan BAnthony and she's got a mole on
her upper lip.
Christine Malec (22:06):
Although the struggle for women's suffrage
resulted first in only whitewomen getting the vote women of
color in the in the UnitedStates were actively actively
engaged in, in the struggle forthis. And one of the leading
figures and speakers on this wasAdela hunt Logan and JJ, you
said you were able to actuallyfind an image of her
JJ Hunt (22:25):
Yeah, a really interesting woman a Adella Hunt
Logan. She had a white father.
Her mother was a free woman ofAfrican and Cherokee to set
descent. And there are a coupleof different photographs and
images of Adella Hunt Logan thatare circulated. In one of them.
She's standing and facing us,it's a full body portrait. And
(22:46):
she's wearing what is a lightcolored floor length dress that
is fairly straight down theskirt. And then the top the
bottom of the dress is actuallyquite billowy, it's a little
bit, it's loose fabric with whatlooks like lace all around the
chest and shoulders, a very,very high neck that comes right
(23:07):
up under her chin, again, verydecorative, long sleeves, kind
of puffy sleeves, not a lot ofthere's nothing is fitted in
this, there's no corset in thisdress. And in these photographs,
she has medium light skin tone,and a very small straight smile,
kind of heavy pronouncedeyebrows, and dark hair that's
(23:32):
that's worn up and kind of piledon the top of her head. It's
hard to know, because these areblack and white and sepia
pictures. And because some ofthese pictures would be
lightened, it's hard to knowwhat her skin tone was actually,
like, based on photos of of thetime, because depending on who
was producing these photos anddistributing them, they might
(23:55):
have an agenda with regards to,to skin tone.
Christine Malec (24:01):
And what what kind of photographic or video
images do we have of proteststhat happened in the United
States around this?
JJ Hunt (24:09):
Well, it's really interesting, you know, when I
first did my initial research,and I just did a Google search,
Google image search for, youknow, women's suffrage or
suffragette movement, and soforth. A lot of the image were
images were pretty much thesame, you'd get the same kind of
pictures of women in thesedresses and the big hats and
sashes holding up signs. Andthere are certainly lots of
images like that, that areavailable. But if you really dig
(24:31):
into it, and what I did was Ifound a couple of different
journalists who had collectedphotographs, folks who really
know how to do their research.
And they had amazing picturesfrom this era. So just a
reminder to self you got to gopast the Google Image Search
sometimes, right? So I foundsome great images actually on
the History Channel websitehistory.com. They had some
(24:52):
amazing images. So you know, oneof the more classic pictures of
the women with their signs. I'vegot a picture here from
Greenwich Village New York City1912. And it's a group of not
quite a dozen women standing ina line kind of you know all the
way across the street. All infull dresses. So these will be
(25:13):
will skirts. So these are longcalf or ankle length skirts
pleated but but fairly straightand stiff fabric and then coats
over top. So with with littlebits of flares around the hips,
buttoned usually very high withpockets on the on the breast and
collars and so forth. And again,big, big wide hats, or smaller,
(25:35):
more fashionable hats, butalways with hats, always with
long skirts, always with boots,many of them having the votes
for women sash or sashes thathave different sayings written
across them. You can't quitezoom in close enough to see all
the sayings that are on thesashes, but they're all facing
us directly, many very, verystern, all light skinned, and
(25:57):
they've got a banner that fordifferent posts to hold up this
banner plus ribbons at thesides. Like really this is a
banner that required a lot ofinfrastructure to hold up. It's
quite big. It's at least as wideas five of the women standing in
a row. And in the banner reads,we were voters out west
(26:18):
exclamation point, why deny ourrights in the east. So lots of
images like that of you know,women holding up banners and
signs another like quiteextraordinary image from the
women's suffrage just parade inNew York 1917. Knees are women
carrying placards with thesignatures of more than a
(26:41):
million women. So it's rightdown the center of a very, very
wide street pairs of womenmarching, holding, you know what
would be like very large sheetsof Bristol board. So I'm
guessing like four feet acrossthree feet tall. And you can't
see anything that are on thesesigns in this picture on these
(27:02):
on these placards. Butapparently they these were the
signatures of women who haddemanded the vote. And there's
scores of them walking downscores of these pairs of women
walking down the middle of thestreet from our upper right down
to our lower left, and the sidesof the street are lined with
people in dark clothing. Sowhereas before what popped were
(27:23):
the women's and women in whitedresses, the women in this
parade in this March are wearingdark dresses, but it's the white
signs that really pop down thecenter of the street. And then
just one last image I'll shareit's a really cool when school
girls designing posters withwomen's equality themes. There
was a suffrage poster contest atthe Fine Arts Club in October of
(27:44):
1915. And in this picture arethese teenage girls who are
lined up at the VIP flat easelswith paintings and pastels that
they're working on. And youknow, they're creating images,
pictures, messages on on theirhomemade posters. Beautifully
done I have to say and and allthese young women are wearing
(28:07):
what look like shower caps sothat they don't get any paint or
whatnot in their hair andthey're wearing what look like
papery aprons, all the way likesmocks that cover the entire
Front's of their bodies. But youcan see poking at the bottom of
these smocks, dark dresses andsome just amazing shoes. These
like very short boots withclunky heels. As all of these
(28:31):
women, these young women are inthe process of creating posters
for this poster contest.
Christine Malec (28:40):
In Canada, the movement for women's suffrage
owes a lot to a group we calledthe Famous Five Nellie McClung
was one of them she was a memberof the Alberta legislature also
included Emily Murphy, HenriettaEdwards, Louise McKinney, and
Irene Parlby. And they werewomen who were from the west and
(29:01):
one of the as well as women'ssuffrage. They fought and won
for the right for women to berecognized as persons under the
law, which has a lot ofimplications. But they also did
they fought for women's suffrageas well and there is a statue of
memorial to them in Ottawa. JJ,can we can we go through some of
(29:24):
the visuals of that?
JJ Hunt (29:25):
Yeah, it's a great piece. It's it's on Parliament
Hill. It's been moved around acouple of times, because I think
it's just been moved once butit's got a replica that's also
in Calgary. It's an amazingpiece of art. It's this monument
with five kind of separatebronze statues, one of each
woman in there presented rightnow in front of the Senate
(29:47):
building in Ottawa on ParliamentHill. It created by a sculptor
named Barbara Patterson. BarbaraPatterson is an older white
woman with short silver hair atthe time the monument was built
in 1998. And in all the photosI've seen of Barbara Patterson,
she's, she's smiling. She's justbeaming as she's working beaming
as she's presenting the work. Itreally looks like she rather
(30:11):
enjoyed this commission. And sheactually included some personal
hidden details in the piece,including a rendering of her
family's terrier is one of thewomen's lockets and a reference
to her parents weddingannouncement as can be found on
the back of the centralnewspaper. It's really cool. So
the monument itself features allfive women. They're gathered in
(30:33):
roughly in a circle on a flatgray stone platform that's
outside the Senate buildingrendered in bronze, bit of a
rough kind of slightly chunkycasting. So not all smoothly
polished, which some bronzestatues are. There's some
there's some texturing in theskin and the fabric and in their
hair. It's a very, it's anentirely tactile piece. People
(30:55):
are welcome to explore and getup close to this a memorial.
Three of the women are standing,two of them are sitting. And
they're gathered for one oftheir famous pink teas. So these
women would gather for theirthey would have meetings about
the movement meetings about howto move their political agenda
forward. But they didn't wantthis to be known publicly.
(31:17):
Because they would face suchfierce opposition. So would they
they called them publicly pinkteeth. Let's have a pink tea
lady, shall we gather pink tea,and it sounded like a wonderful,
innocuous, very simple lady likething to do. Meanwhile, they
were gathering and organizinglike a bunch of badasses. It's
just fantastic. So thisgathering of these separate
(31:40):
sculptures is quite spread outleaves lots of room for visitors
to make their way around andthrough the monument and kind of
explore and interact with it.
The statue of Emily Murphy isstanding beside an empty chair.
She's quite tall, straightposture, wearing a plain ankle
length dress with a scarf tiedunder the collar like a really
loose neck tie. She has one handon the back of the chair. This
(32:03):
chair kind of resembles a like astraight back, wooden dining
room chair with a leatherleather pad on the seat. That's
the kind of style a chair, she'sgot one arm on the back of the
chair and her other arm isreaching out, palm up and open.
It's a very inviting pose. Andmany people accept the offer the
artists very intentionally putan empty chair in this piece to
(32:26):
say, please come sit with us.
And in fact there's a smooth,very glossy patina on the back
and on the seat of the chair.
This is common on brasssculptures and bronze sculptures
that are routinely touched bythe public. So this is an
indication that people areindeed sitting with Emily Murphy
and taking in this scene. Theother standing figures are Irene
(32:48):
parle B and Nellie McClung.
Parlby is wearing a longbuttoned overcoat and a wide
brimmed hat. She has one hand onher hip, and the other one is
gesturing at McClung. McClungwears a long coat with a wide
fur collar that covers hershoulders is almost like a like
a shawl. And she's got on around hat, a smaller hat with a
(33:11):
very with a short little brimthat covers the top and back of
her head, and she's got greatshoes, little ankle boots with
chunky heels. And in her hand,McClung holds a newspaper, which
is also rendered in bronze, andit has the newspaper name the
journal right across the top,then the date October 18 1920.
And then a big headline thatcovers the front the entire
(33:34):
front page of this newspaper inEnglish and in French women are
persons, less femmes on a persong. And it's just like
wonderful covers the whole thingand directly across the circle
from McClung are the two seatedfigures Henrietta Edwards and
Louise McKinney. And betweenthem is this is a round side
table with some some cups andsaucers some tea cups and
(33:56):
saucers, McKinney appears to belooking at the newspaper
directly across from her throughher round glasses, and she wears
what looks like a string ofpearls and a little tiny bow
like a brooch. I believe thislittle bow represents the white
ribbon of the temperancemovement. And she has a slight
kind of closed mouth grin. Herknees are together. She's
(34:18):
leaning forward in her chair,and her hands are clasped
together and held beside hercheeks or beside one cheek with
her elbows tucked in. And Ifound this quite a curious
gesture. So I mimicked it. And Iimagined facing this newspaper
headline for the first time andI was immediately filled with
this like sweet, warm pride withmy hands clasped beside my
(34:40):
cheek, elbows tucked in leaningforward. It's really a lovely
pose. And then Henrietta Edwardssits on the other side of the
table. She's a bit of a stoutwoman. She's gone on a long
dress and she's got the locketon the necklace. This is the
locket that's got the terrier onit. And she's also face Seeing
the newspaper in her left handshe holds a saucer down at her
(35:04):
lap, and in her right hand, shehas her tea cup raised to head
height, toasting the headlinewomen are persons.
Christine Malec (35:11):
Lovely, lovely.
Something we take so much forgranted now our legal status the
right to vote, it did not comeeasily. So thank you, JJ, for
describing that that was a realgift to me and to all women, I
hope and thank you to all thewomen, courageous women who have
stood up in the face ofoppression to do the right thing.
(35:33):
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can follow us on Twitter at talkDescription.
Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ
Hunt.
Christine Malec (00:27):
Hi, I'm Christine Malec.
JJ Hunt (00:28):
And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to me, where
the visuals of current eventsand the world around us get
hashed out in description richconversations.
Christine Malec (00:47):
In previous episodes, we've talked about
protests and the visualsassociated with them. And we're
going to do that today. But in adifferent way, we're going to
look at a historical protestmovement, the movement for
women's suffrage, the right tovote. And, of course, there's a
few qualifiers here, which iswe're talking about, largely the
(01:10):
Western world. And when we givedates and things, because we're
going to sort of tell the storyand talk about the visuals, it's
really important to know thatthis is not universal suffrage.
So when women get the vote insomewhere, like, you know,
Australia, or the United Statesor Canada, it's not all women,
(01:33):
it doesn't it's only whitewomen. So in the States, black
women couldn't vote till the1960s. And in Britain, when
women first got the vote, youhave to be over 30. And in
Australia, it did not includeAboriginal women. So when we
talk about the successes of thismovement, it's really important
to remember that it wasn't auniversal success right away. Of
(01:58):
course, the other challenge isthe visuals that this movement
was happening in the late 1800s,early 1900s. And so our visuals
may be a little spotty. Today,it's easy to look back and see
this struggle as an obviousstruggle with an obvious right
(02:20):
answer. And it's it's acompleted protest movement. But
at the time, that was not true.
And it's sometimes said thatprotests are the language of the
unheard. And I think there'svalue in that. And so, at the
time, the protests that werehappening for women, by women to
get the vote for women were verycontroversial. And I think that
(02:43):
it's a really useful thing tokeep in mind how courageous one
would have to be for women whohad typically been trained to be
passive and told that women thatwe were not smart enough to
engage that we didn't belong inthe public sphere. For me the
(03:04):
courage that they had thosewomen had to stand up and say,
Ah, that's, that's not cool. wasan unimaginable, really. And so
one of the things we're going totalk about as we do descriptions
of cert of particular women whoare relevant in the movement, is
(03:25):
I've asked JJ to give a littlefocus on clothing. And the
reason is not because I'm afashionista, but it's because I
think the clothes, the clothing,women were expected to wear is
one easily accessible metric forthe expectations that were put
(03:45):
on women for femininity for lackof easy movement for decorative
newness for proscribed behavior.
And so when we get todescriptions of specific women,
I think that's going to bereally useful. For me, where I
first started learning aboutthis movement was the movement
(04:08):
in Britain to get women to vote.
And so this started in the mid1800s, with the suffragist
movement. And these were verysmart, thoughtful women who
believed that throughnegotiation and reason, they
could persuade the governmentthat women should have the right
to vote, but it didn't reallywork went on and on and on. And
eventually, some women in thatmovement got very disillusioned.
(04:34):
And they decided that deeds weremore important than words. And
this is where some of theprotests started from was this
idea that nobody's reallylistening to us and so, protests
became surprisingly flashy. Sothe suffragists that kind of big
(04:58):
came branded as suffragettes inan attempt to disparage them in
the media and but in in mediasavvy fashion, these women said,
hey, that's cool name, we'regoing to co opt that and we're
going to use it. And so I thinkit's fair to say that the
suffragettes were incrediblysavvy in terms of how to use
(05:18):
media on spectacle. And so JJ,what visuals Did you find to to
illustrate that? Yeah,
JJ Hunt (05:26):
it was it's really interesting to switch from
suffragist to suffragette at is,is profound. And the way the
suffragettes were smart andstrategic about the visuals of
the movement, that it wasimportant to them to stand out
to create spectacle, and stay onthe front pages of newspapers.
(05:47):
So they were really intentionalabout the visuals of the
movement. So one of the firstthings they did was they came up
with colors, they came up withthe colors of the movement,
which were purple, white, andgreen, purple was to represent
loyalty. White was to representpurity or virtue of the
movement, and green was torepresent hope. And these colors
(06:09):
were used in in painted postersand on signs and on the sashes
that they wore when they wereprotesting. They even use them
in their dress code. They wanteda dress code for the movement,
in part to visually demonstratesolidarity, right? When you see
a group of people all wearingthe same coordinated uniform.
(06:30):
It's visually very, veryimpressive sighted people often
associate that kind ofcoordination with a seriousness
with with with unity. That's whymilitary possessions always
feature soldiers in matchinguniforms, the suffragettes they
had been depicted in the mediaby the opposition as grotesque
(06:50):
hags, these horrendouscharacters harridans. These
these images that had been putout in the media of you know,
cartoonish, horrific caricaturesof suffragettes were incredibly
degrading, and even racist. I'vegot an image here, it's a
postcard from 1909 that wasdistributed, that has on the
(07:15):
front of that the entire imageis just a cartoon image, a
caricature of what is supposedto be a suffragette. This person
has outrageously large lips,pointed teeth, one kind of
pointed thing right in themiddle of the teeth, a very wide
flat nose, kind of bulging eyes,and like the sneering kind of,
(07:37):
frankly, ape like animal lookinglike really incredibly racist.
This is the idea of these arethe women women who are who look
like this. These are the womenwho who think they have the
right to be equal and get thevote this horrendous, very
unfeminist and very grotesquecreatures. So to counter this,
(08:00):
the suffragettes were reallyintentional about presenting
themselves as very femininequote, unquote feminine in line
with the styles and fashions ofthe day, and yet extremely media
savvy so photographs that werepublished in newspapers at the
time were either in black andwhite, or sepia toned. sepia
chemical process leaves imageswith like hints of brown and
(08:21):
mustard yellow instead of pureblack and white, and
photographers and editors ofnewspapers, looked for images
that had contrast for the frontcover of their newspaper. So all
of these different things theway they had already been
presented the ideas about whatnewspaper photographers and
editors would want. They pulledall of this together and they
created a uniform. Women whowere participating in marches
(08:44):
wore long, white, fashionabledresses, with white hats that
had wide brims, often toppedwith white [flowers], and then
they had white sashes acrosstheir torsos trimmed in green
and purple and those red votesfor women. And the white dresses
really stood out in these blackand white photos, especially
(09:07):
when compared to the darkerclothing that most of the men
were wearing. Right. The men arewearing dark wool coats, dark
wool caps, dark top hats, andthe uniforms of the police
officers right the policeofficers who are harassing them
and arresting them. They arealso in dark uniforms with these
dark bell shaped hats. And sothey were really they stood out
(09:28):
in photos in the purples andgreens by the way that were used
in their signs and their sashesand their banners and whatnot.
purples and greens really stoodout well in both black and white
and sepia toned images. Not allcolors do some colors get more
washed out but green and purple.
They stay vibrant. And I've gotsome photo examples here from
newspapers. I got one picturehere. Black and white photo of a
(09:48):
parade of women in long whitedresses, these white hats
marching down the middle of thestreet. They're kind of marching
from our upper right down towardour lower left. And they are
flanked on both the far side inthe near side of the street by
men in dark suits and coats. Andwow, this like column of women
in white. And again, like ankleto shoulder, wrist to neck, like
(10:10):
all of their body is covered inwhite clothing with these white
wide brimmed hats. Another photois a small group of women that
sitting atop a carriage that'sbeing pulled through a huge
crowd of people by a singlehorse. The horse is dark, the
men in the crowd are in darkclothing, the police that are
there, they're in dark uniforms.
(10:32):
And then high above them all isthe woman sitting at the front
of the carriage with the horsesrains, long white skirt, what
looks like a white blazer, andshe's got on a white hat with a
wide brim that's almost as wideas her shoulders, and she glows
like a beacon of light in a darksea. So smart with this uniform.
Christine Malec (10:54):
This isn't supposed to be a history lesson,
but women in England did get thevote in 1919. And I remember
when I was reading about this,they stopped advocating full
stop in 1914 to contribute tothe war effort. And so it's not
that they were insensitive towhat was going on in the rest of
the world. But before that time,they did things like arson,
(11:17):
yelling rocks at at Parliamentand very disruptive things that
even today, we would go ooh,that's but at that, I just can't
overstate how, how radical Thismust have seemed in that world
in the world of you know, theearly 1900s. And so can we talk
(11:38):
about Emily Davison and what shedid?
JJ Hunt (11:41):
Yeah, I mean, this time this switch. And you're right,
there are a couple of kind ofkey moments, one being the 1914,
where they switched to thefocusing on the war effort. But
even before then there was thisreal significant protest
strategy that changed and thatkind of led to Emily Davison
(12:03):
becoming the, you know, theadvocate and the militant that
she was. So before November 181910, the suffragettes had been
having these big long marches,these big parades, they were out
in public, and they were makingsure that they were getting on
the covers of newspapers byclashing with police by
(12:24):
protesting and clashing withpolice. And then on November 18
1910, a day that became known asBlack Friday, the suffragettes
were protesting at ParliamentSquare, and they were surrounded
by men, surrounded by police,and there was a riot. And 50
women were physically andsexually assaulted by police in
(12:45):
this riot. And so for their ownsafety, they needed to change
tactics. And instead that's whenthey switched to this campaign
of property destruction ofarson. There are newspaper
photos that show stores withcracked and smashed front
windows, these the big displaywindow panes that face the Main
(13:05):
Street on an old Victoriancommercial street, telephone
wires were cut, they torched andburn down buildings. I've got an
image here of a tea house in KewGardens that was destroyed by
suffragettes. And the buildingis nothing but a few charred
sticks, like the entire buildingwas absolutely burned to the
(13:26):
ground. And one of the moreextreme suffragettes, who was
part of this very, very militantgroup was Emily Davison. She
report purportedly beat a manwith a horse whip, having
mistaken him for politician thatshe had a serious gripe with.
She started burning downmailboxes. These are the famous
(13:48):
British Red post boxes, they'rekind of chest high red metal
tubes with rounded tops in theirdifferent configurations. But at
the time, they were more or lessthese tubes, very sturdy metal
mailboxes. And I believe shestarted by packing the mailboxes
with oil soaked rags and thenlike tossing in a match. And
then the idea caught on withinthe movement and small bombs
(14:12):
were later used by others toblow up these post boxes. Emily
Davison was arrested many, manytimes. She she went she went on
hunger strikes while in prison.
She was force fed through thenose, which was a torture that
was perpetrated on women inparticular who were who were
protesting with hunger strikes,extremely painful way to force
(14:35):
feed someone and so to toprotest this treatment, she
actually threw herself from aprison balcony in a suicide
attempt, hoping to drawattention to the torture the
idea being if people saw howhorrendous this was that someone
actually would rather end theirown life than submit to this
(14:56):
torture than that then thepractice would end She survived
the end of Emily Davidson'scareer as a militant came in
1913. With the Epsom Derby isthis a story that you're
familiar with Chris?
Christine Malec (15:12):
I'm actually not familiar with it.
JJ Hunt (15:15):
This wasn't something that I had heard of before
either until doing research forthis episode. So that 1913 the
Epsom Derby is a is a horserace, one of the most important
and storied races in the, youknow, British sporting calendar,
certainly at the time 500,000people in attendance at the
derby in 1913. And King Georgethe fifth was there in support
(15:39):
of his horse who was enteredinto the race. And so Emily
Davison went didn't dress inwhite dressed all in black, so
that she was kind of moreincognito. And she got herself
into position at the crowdedinner track. So the inside
track, you could you could youknow, before the race began,
obviously, get across and youcould be at the inside track and
(16:00):
she got herself right to therailing of the inside track. And
the railing is of just a verysimple chest high simple bar
with continuous rail supportedby posts every five feet or so.
And she got a spot right at thefinal corner. This is called
Tottenham corner. And the cornerwas in clear view of the cameras
(16:22):
that were set up to film therace. So the cameras are set up
across the track as the horseswould round this final corner,
big moment in the race. Andthere's footage of this this
moment and what happens is thefirst cluster of horses rounds
the corner and races by and thenyou can see across the track in
(16:43):
the from this crowd, Davisonducks under the railing and she
waits for the first pack to tomove by and she finds a small
gap between the packs of horses.
She steps out from the rail ontothe track directly in the path
of the king's horse. And thiswhole action from when she she
slips under and steps out infront of the king's horses,
(17:06):
maybe three seconds tops. Ithappens very, very quickly. Like
I said, she's all dressed inblack, not white, so it's a
little bit harder to see her,especially in this grainy black
and white footage that's dottedwith watermarks and very fine
hairs. But she steps out intothe track and she's holding in
front of her a small object andwhat it is is a purple, white
and green flag the flag of themovement and the king's horse
(17:29):
slams into her at full speed andknocks her back at sensor
absolutely tumbling. It's trulyone of the most violent things
I've ever seen on film, thehorse falls to one side and
skids along the dirt track. Therider of the horse flips into
the air completely out of frame.
(17:52):
And she tumbled like as she gothit she just what like
absolutely flipped head overheels several times. And she
actually died in hospital fourdays later of her wounds.
Photographs of fanned alizedproperty had appeared in lots of
newspapers, artist renderings ofwomen committing those acts of
(18:13):
violence had been you know, madeand shown to the public. But
this was the first time thatthere was footage of a woman
engaged in an act of extremeviolence for the cause. And in
fact, I've got a I got a thefront cover of The Daily sketch
which was a tabloid newspaper inBritain at the time. And it's
got a photograph of like a fullyou know, paper wide photograph
(18:38):
of this moment with most of thehorses racing off a you know
toward the finish line. But onetangle of one fallen horse with
this Emily's body just kind oftangled up near the this fallen
horse and and the headline readsdeath of Emily Davison who
(18:58):
stopped the king's Derby horseand is the first woman to give
her life for votes for women.
Christine Malec (19:05):
And I know the the force feeding you refer to.
It's very difficult to to talkabout but I've I've I know a
little bit about it. It was donewith funnels and hideous torture
and it it was used in the UnitedStates to specially I believe
for women who were advocatingfor access to birth control and
(19:26):
who resorted to hunger strikesin prison and it had long
lasting health. Healthconsequences chest in fact,
chronic lung infections chestinfections. Yeah, lots lots of
courage that it took for thesewomen to achieve what to us
seems so unquestioning and basicthe right to vote. Can we talk
(19:47):
about the United States there'sdefinitely women's names are so
well known. Susan B. AnthonyLucy Stone, what images were you
able to find from the movementin The United States.
JJ Hunt (20:01):
So I've got some portrait images, some portrait
photographs of of a couple ofkey folks, I can describe them
and then maybe we can talk a bitabout images from the protests
in the United States as well. Sothe classic photograph of Susan
B Anthony that is showneverywhere it's she's an older
women in this in thisphotograph, light skinned woman.
(20:21):
hair parted down the middle andkind of pulled back she's seated
and gazing off kind of past ourleft shoulder. She's got a stern
expression straight line for herthin lips. She's wearing small
round wireframe glasses. Andshe's wearing a like a black
silky looking top of a dress.
You can't see the bottom half ofthe dress she's seated and
(20:46):
that's not in frame. But the tophalf of this dress is black and
silky. And it's got a very highcolor for I believe what would
be the shirt underneath it lookslike a lacy pattern shirt. I'm
guessing that it's a black laceon top of an another white
shirt. So this is a garment withlots and lots of layers, outer
black silk, and then under thata black lace and then under that
(21:10):
a white dress or like a whiteshirt and some of that kind of
lace and White comes out at theat the cuffs and you can see her
hands are in front of her andand the skin on her hands is
quite wrinkly. You can see manyof the veins in her hands.
That's the classic image ofSusan B Anthony Lucy Stone. One
of the images that pops up ofher quite often. She's a younger
(21:33):
woman again light skin tone.
Again center parted hair withkind of heavier down by the ears
so covers the center part hair,dark hair comes down and covers
the ears in a very smooth almostbowl shape. But But frames her
face instead of going you knowcalled no bangs. So it doesn't
(21:56):
come across her forehead so highforehead, fairly substantial
nose, fuller lips than Susan BAnthony and she's got a mole on
her upper lip.
Christine Malec (22:06):
Although the struggle for women's suffrage
resulted first in only whitewomen getting the vote women of
color in the in the UnitedStates were actively actively
engaged in, in the struggle forthis. And one of the leading
figures and speakers on this wasAdela hunt Logan and JJ, you
said you were able to actuallyfind an image of her
JJ Hunt (22:25):
Yeah, a really interesting woman a Adella Hunt
Logan. She had a white father.
Her mother was a free woman ofAfrican and Cherokee to set
descent. And there are a coupleof different photographs and
images of Adella Hunt Logan thatare circulated. In one of them.
She's standing and facing us,it's a full body portrait. And
(22:46):
she's wearing what is a lightcolored floor length dress that
is fairly straight down theskirt. And then the top the
bottom of the dress is actuallyquite billowy, it's a little
bit, it's loose fabric with whatlooks like lace all around the
chest and shoulders, a very,very high neck that comes right
(23:07):
up under her chin, again, verydecorative, long sleeves, kind
of puffy sleeves, not a lot ofthere's nothing is fitted in
this, there's no corset in thisdress. And in these photographs,
she has medium light skin tone,and a very small straight smile,
kind of heavy pronouncedeyebrows, and dark hair that's
(23:32):
that's worn up and kind of piledon the top of her head. It's
hard to know, because these areblack and white and sepia
pictures. And because some ofthese pictures would be
lightened, it's hard to knowwhat her skin tone was actually,
like, based on photos of of thetime, because depending on who
was producing these photos anddistributing them, they might
(23:55):
have an agenda with regards to,to skin tone.
Christine Malec (24:01):
And what what kind of photographic or video
images do we have of proteststhat happened in the United
States around this?
JJ Hunt (24:09):
Well, it's really interesting, you know, when I
first did my initial research,and I just did a Google search,
Google image search for, youknow, women's suffrage or
suffragette movement, and soforth. A lot of the image were
images were pretty much thesame, you'd get the same kind of
pictures of women in thesedresses and the big hats and
sashes holding up signs. Andthere are certainly lots of
images like that, that areavailable. But if you really dig
(24:31):
into it, and what I did was Ifound a couple of different
journalists who had collectedphotographs, folks who really
know how to do their research.
And they had amazing picturesfrom this era. So just a
reminder to self you got to gopast the Google Image Search
sometimes, right? So I foundsome great images actually on
the History Channel websitehistory.com. They had some
(24:52):
amazing images. So you know, oneof the more classic pictures of
the women with their signs. I'vegot a picture here from
Greenwich Village New York City1912. And it's a group of not
quite a dozen women standing ina line kind of you know all the
way across the street. All infull dresses. So these will be
(25:13):
will skirts. So these are longcalf or ankle length skirts
pleated but but fairly straightand stiff fabric and then coats
over top. So with with littlebits of flares around the hips,
buttoned usually very high withpockets on the on the breast and
collars and so forth. And again,big, big wide hats, or smaller,
(25:35):
more fashionable hats, butalways with hats, always with
long skirts, always with boots,many of them having the votes
for women sash or sashes thathave different sayings written
across them. You can't quitezoom in close enough to see all
the sayings that are on thesashes, but they're all facing
us directly, many very, verystern, all light skinned, and
(25:57):
they've got a banner that fordifferent posts to hold up this
banner plus ribbons at thesides. Like really this is a
banner that required a lot ofinfrastructure to hold up. It's
quite big. It's at least as wideas five of the women standing in
a row. And in the banner reads,we were voters out west
(26:18):
exclamation point, why deny ourrights in the east. So lots of
images like that of you know,women holding up banners and
signs another like quiteextraordinary image from the
women's suffrage just parade inNew York 1917. Knees are women
carrying placards with thesignatures of more than a
(26:41):
million women. So it's rightdown the center of a very, very
wide street pairs of womenmarching, holding, you know what
would be like very large sheetsof Bristol board. So I'm
guessing like four feet acrossthree feet tall. And you can't
see anything that are on thesesigns in this picture on these
(27:02):
on these placards. Butapparently they these were the
signatures of women who haddemanded the vote. And there's
scores of them walking downscores of these pairs of women
walking down the middle of thestreet from our upper right down
to our lower left, and the sidesof the street are lined with
people in dark clothing. Sowhereas before what popped were
(27:23):
the women's and women in whitedresses, the women in this
parade in this March are wearingdark dresses, but it's the white
signs that really pop down thecenter of the street. And then
just one last image I'll shareit's a really cool when school
girls designing posters withwomen's equality themes. There
was a suffrage poster contest atthe Fine Arts Club in October of
(27:44):
1915. And in this picture arethese teenage girls who are
lined up at the VIP flat easelswith paintings and pastels that
they're working on. And youknow, they're creating images,
pictures, messages on on theirhomemade posters. Beautifully
done I have to say and and allthese young women are wearing
(28:07):
what look like shower caps sothat they don't get any paint or
whatnot in their hair andthey're wearing what look like
papery aprons, all the way likesmocks that cover the entire
Front's of their bodies. But youcan see poking at the bottom of
these smocks, dark dresses andsome just amazing shoes. These
like very short boots withclunky heels. As all of these
(28:31):
women, these young women are inthe process of creating posters
for this poster contest.
Christine Malec (28:40):
In Canada, the movement for women's suffrage
owes a lot to a group we calledthe Famous Five Nellie McClung
was one of them she was a memberof the Alberta legislature also
included Emily Murphy, HenriettaEdwards, Louise McKinney, and
Irene Parlby. And they werewomen who were from the west and
(29:01):
one of the as well as women'ssuffrage. They fought and won
for the right for women to berecognized as persons under the
law, which has a lot ofimplications. But they also did
they fought for women's suffrageas well and there is a statue of
memorial to them in Ottawa. JJ,can we can we go through some of
(29:24):
the visuals of that?
JJ Hunt (29:25):
Yeah, it's a great piece. It's it's on Parliament
Hill. It's been moved around acouple of times, because I think
it's just been moved once butit's got a replica that's also
in Calgary. It's an amazingpiece of art. It's this monument
with five kind of separatebronze statues, one of each
woman in there presented rightnow in front of the Senate
(29:47):
building in Ottawa on ParliamentHill. It created by a sculptor
named Barbara Patterson. BarbaraPatterson is an older white
woman with short silver hair atthe time the monument was built
in 1998. And in all the photosI've seen of Barbara Patterson,
she's, she's smiling. She's justbeaming as she's working beaming
as she's presenting the work. Itreally looks like she rather
(30:11):
enjoyed this commission. And sheactually included some personal
hidden details in the piece,including a rendering of her
family's terrier is one of thewomen's lockets and a reference
to her parents weddingannouncement as can be found on
the back of the centralnewspaper. It's really cool. So
the monument itself features allfive women. They're gathered in
(30:33):
roughly in a circle on a flatgray stone platform that's
outside the Senate buildingrendered in bronze, bit of a
rough kind of slightly chunkycasting. So not all smoothly
polished, which some bronzestatues are. There's some
there's some texturing in theskin and the fabric and in their
hair. It's a very, it's anentirely tactile piece. People
(30:55):
are welcome to explore and getup close to this a memorial.
Three of the women are standing,two of them are sitting. And
they're gathered for one oftheir famous pink teas. So these
women would gather for theirthey would have meetings about
the movement meetings about howto move their political agenda
forward. But they didn't wantthis to be known publicly.
(31:17):
Because they would face suchfierce opposition. So would they
they called them publicly pinkteeth. Let's have a pink tea
lady, shall we gather pink tea,and it sounded like a wonderful,
innocuous, very simple lady likething to do. Meanwhile, they
were gathering and organizinglike a bunch of badasses. It's
just fantastic. So thisgathering of these separate
(31:40):
sculptures is quite spread outleaves lots of room for visitors
to make their way around andthrough the monument and kind of
explore and interact with it.
The statue of Emily Murphy isstanding beside an empty chair.
She's quite tall, straightposture, wearing a plain ankle
length dress with a scarf tiedunder the collar like a really
loose neck tie. She has one handon the back of the chair. This
(32:03):
chair kind of resembles a like astraight back, wooden dining
room chair with a leatherleather pad on the seat. That's
the kind of style a chair, she'sgot one arm on the back of the
chair and her other arm isreaching out, palm up and open.
It's a very inviting pose. Andmany people accept the offer the
artists very intentionally putan empty chair in this piece to
(32:26):
say, please come sit with us.
And in fact there's a smooth,very glossy patina on the back
and on the seat of the chair.
This is common on brasssculptures and bronze sculptures
that are routinely touched bythe public. So this is an
indication that people areindeed sitting with Emily Murphy
and taking in this scene. Theother standing figures are Irene
(32:48):
parle B and Nellie McClung.
Parlby is wearing a longbuttoned overcoat and a wide
brimmed hat. She has one hand onher hip, and the other one is
gesturing at McClung. McClungwears a long coat with a wide
fur collar that covers hershoulders is almost like a like
a shawl. And she's got on around hat, a smaller hat with a
(33:11):
very with a short little brimthat covers the top and back of
her head, and she's got greatshoes, little ankle boots with
chunky heels. And in her hand,McClung holds a newspaper, which
is also rendered in bronze, andit has the newspaper name the
journal right across the top,then the date October 18 1920.
And then a big headline thatcovers the front the entire
(33:34):
front page of this newspaper inEnglish and in French women are
persons, less femmes on a persong. And it's just like
wonderful covers the whole thingand directly across the circle
from McClung are the two seatedfigures Henrietta Edwards and
Louise McKinney. And betweenthem is this is a round side
table with some some cups andsaucers some tea cups and
(33:56):
saucers, McKinney appears to belooking at the newspaper
directly across from her throughher round glasses, and she wears
what looks like a string ofpearls and a little tiny bow
like a brooch. I believe thislittle bow represents the white
ribbon of the temperancemovement. And she has a slight
kind of closed mouth grin. Herknees are together. She's
(34:18):
leaning forward in her chair,and her hands are clasped
together and held beside hercheeks or beside one cheek with
her elbows tucked in. And Ifound this quite a curious
gesture. So I mimicked it. And Iimagined facing this newspaper
headline for the first time andI was immediately filled with
this like sweet, warm pride withmy hands clasped beside my
(34:40):
cheek, elbows tucked in leaningforward. It's really a lovely
pose. And then Henrietta Edwardssits on the other side of the
table. She's a bit of a stoutwoman. She's gone on a long
dress and she's got the locketon the necklace. This is the
locket that's got the terrier onit. And she's also face Seeing
the newspaper in her left handshe holds a saucer down at her
(35:04):
lap, and in her right hand, shehas her tea cup raised to head
height, toasting the headlinewomen are persons.
Christine Malec (35:11):
Lovely, lovely.
Something we take so much forgranted now our legal status the
right to vote, it did not comeeasily. So thank you, JJ, for
describing that that was a realgift to me and to all women, I
hope and thank you to all thewomen, courageous women who have
stood up in the face ofoppression to do the right thing.
(35:33):
We hope you're loving the show.
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