With All Her Might
The Life of Gertrude Harding, Militant Suffragette
-
- USD 9.99
-
- USD 9.99
Descripción editorial
Born in 1889, Gertrude Harding spent a boistrous childhood on a Welsford, New Brunswick, farm. She travelled to Hawaii to live with her sister, and, when her sister moved to London in 1912, Harding went with her. One day, from the top of a London bus, she saw a parade of women carrying large white posters. Attended by a policeman, they walked in single file on the street close to the curb as passersby stared and shouted rude remarks. It was a poster-parade of Militant Suffragettes demanding votes for women; after more than two decades of mild action, the Suffragettes were on the warpath. Gertrude Harding couldn't wait to join them. After a short initiation, Harding and a comrade-in-arms hit conservative Englishmen in a very tender spot: they smashed up the orchid house at Kew Gardens. Then, to counter government violence, Harding organized a cadre of women who learned jujitsu and wore Indian clubs on their belts. This bodyguard had two jobs: to deter the policemen who tried to haul Suffragettes off to prison, and to arrange escapes for Suffragettes on the run. When the politicians changed tactics and the bodyguard's work decreased, Harding served as a private secretary to Christabel Pankhurst, the movement's strategist. Then, as World War I intensified, Harding became the publisher of the Suffragette newspaper, again staying one jump ahead of the police. During the War, Harding found her second career: she became a social worker among women labourers in a munitions plant. Afterwards, she did social work in industrial New Jersey. When she retired, she gardened and sold jam, and she also wrote her memoirs, which she illustrated with sketches and snapshots. Finally, old and ill, she returned to Rothesay, New Brunswick, where she died in 1977.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cleverly using all the materials at her disposal--particularly the memoir, photos, quirky drawings, memorabilia and letters in Harding's scrapbook--Canadian writer Wilson crafts a charming, though sketchy, portrait of her great aunt, "an ordinary woman... who, through coincidence, was able to seize a chance to help change the foundation of society." Harding (1889-1977), a sheltered but adventuresome young woman, had traveled from rural Canada ending up in London, where she studied art. At 23, her sense of justice sparked by a march, she quit school to volunteer for the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), London's militant suffragettes who risked their lives to help women get the vote. Isolated from her family and uninterested in marriage, she devoted herself to the cause, graduating from organizer to courageous activist; she carried messages to secret hideouts, destroyed rare orchids in the Royal Botanic Gardens, trained armed female bodyguards and assisted WSPU's leaders, Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter, Christabel. Harding's life after the suffragettes--she was a social worker for 16 years before retiring--was uneventful, and readers may be frustrated with this shadowy figure's near-silence about her personal life ("Whether Gert fell in love with men, women or both is a matter of speculation. She was private about romance"). Most intriguing is the juxtaposition of Harding's personal perspective with Wilson's concise, clearly written history of women's increasingly desperate, unprecedented push for the vote in Great Britain. Photos.
