'Looking More Like Ghosts Than Women': Unity among Militant Suffragette Hunger-Strikers in the Women's Social and Political Union.

This article explores how the practices of hunger-striking and force-feeding worked to build unity among suffragettes within the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) during the years of the militant suffrage campaign, 1903–1914. It uses evidence of these practices found in publicly available ar...

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Publicado en:Australian Feminist Studies Vol. 40; no. 126; pp. 356 - 375
Autores principales: Sims, Hazel, Richards, Harriette
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Taylor & Francis Ltd Dec2025
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: 'Looking More Like Ghosts Than Women': Unity among Militant Suffragette Hunger-Strikers in the Women's Social and Political Union.
      aug:
        au:
          Sims, Hazel
          Richards, Harriette
        affil:
          Independent Researcher, Australia
          School of Fashion and Textiles, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
      su:
        Hunger strikes
        Solidarity
        History of feminism
        Protest movements
        Women's suffrage
        Suffragists
      sug:
        subj:
          Hunger strikes
          Solidarity
          History of feminism
          Protest movements
          Women's suffrage
          Suffragists
      keyword:
        Archival studies
        feminist historiography
        forcible feeding
        hunger-striking
        political protest
        suffragettes
        WSPU
      ab: This article explores how the practices of hunger-striking and force-feeding worked to build unity among suffragettes within the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) during the years of the militant suffrage campaign, 1903–1914. It uses evidence of these practices found in publicly available archives in Australia – The Sarah Jane Baines Correspondence, 1907–1909 (SJBC) and The Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family Suffrage Research Collection (KCPC) – to illustrate the forms of solidarity that sustained the activities of suffragettes who formed cross-class alliances of collectivity on the front lines of the campaign. Using feminist historiography and feminist archival research, we argue that the practice of hunger-striking, employed as a tactic of political protest, and the response of force-feeding, enacted by authorities to deter hunger-striking and break down women's resistance, had a profound effect not only on the women themselves, but on the movement as a collective of women united under a common goal. The article demonstrates how, by drawing attention to their lack of status as political subjects inside the prison system, hunger-striking suffragettes revealed the lack of political status for all women outside the prison walls.
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    language: English
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