Product Description

The story of the fight to gain the vote for women is about much more than a peripheral if picturesque skirmish around the introduction of universal suffrage. It is an explosive story of social and sexual revolutionary upheaval, and one which has not yet ended. The movement for women's suffrage in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries prefigured to a startling extent the controversies which rage today around the role of women. Far from the stereotype of a uniform body of women chaining themselves to railings, the early feminist movement was riven by virulent arguments over women's role in society, the balance to be struck between self-fulfilment and their duties to family and children, and their relationship with men. Melanie Phillips' brilliant book tells the story of the fight for women's suffrage in a way which sets the high drama of those events in the context of the moral and intellectual ferment that characterised it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31082 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 370 pages

Review
'Gripping and rather magnificent' THE TIMES; 'A richly detailed history' DAILY TELEGRAPH; 'This highly enjoyable history gives an excellent sense of the vivid feuds, ideological divides and disputes which fractured the enlivened the progressive Victorian feminist movement' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH; '[A book] shot through with Phillips' customary clarity ... [she] shows beautifully that the vote was really symbolic of a far wider range of issues on which women were struggling to find a public voice' EVENING STANDARD

About the Author
Melanie Phillips is a DAILY MAIL and former SUNDAY TIMES columnist and broadcaster who is a regular panellist on Radio 4's THE MORAL MAZE.

Customer Reviews

A clear overview of the suffragette movement
Melanie Philips writes with great clarity and covers a broad subject admirably. It's an extremely readable book (I sat and read it in about three sessions) and you will certainly want to know more about some of the characters who have had such a strong impression on the women's movement. In fact, that's its only weakness, leaving you wanting more on some areas, but I guess the book would have had to be twice the length. As it is, it leaves you feeling ten times more informed about the women's movement and has a very thought-provoking final chapter. I entertained/bored my husband and friends for hours debating some of the issues raised.

interesting and very readable
This was a very interesting book to read and it is a shame that there aren't more books on this subject. Like the other review I would agree that it does leave you wanting to know more. There are so many questions: some of them are answered but, like other questions in history, some are not. The only qualm I had with this book was the fact that it wasn't long enough in my opinion and I found myself having too look up some of the less well-known people as the author didn't explain who they were. However this just may be my lack of knowledge on the time period and it shouldn't put you off reading the book. So it definitely gets five stars for me considering there aren't many other books like this to compare with.