Some women freely accepted this. Others, however, felt bored or trapped and wanted a meaning to life. The Garret sisters, Elizabeth and Millicent along with Emily Davies were among the most determined campaigners for women’s rights. As the following quote from Charlotte Bronte’s ‘Jane Eyre’ shows, women’s views on the subject were changing.
“Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer too rigid a constraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men suffer.”
There was a belief that women should give birth to as many babies as possible for the future of the country and the British Empire. People who believed such things were against women getting the vote. We call this belief patriarchy. Queen Victoria was quoted to have said:
“With the vote, women would become the most hateful, heartless and disgusting of human beings. Where would be the protection which man was intended to give the weaker sex?”
The belief that women should have a large family contributed to the thought at the time that contraception was evil.
People ‘on the left’ in politics were against women getting the vote because, the majority of the women would have voted conservative, and kept the Liberal Democrats and Labour out of power. This was why many Labour MP’s and the Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith were against women getting the vote.
“I do not think you will bring this change about until you have satisfied the country that the majority of women are in favour of it.” Herbert Asquith, Liberal Prime Minister.
Many men, especially those in middle classes, feared the advances being made in girls’ and women’s education. The years after 1870 saw a vast increase in girls’ grammar schools and girls’ private boarding schools, and also by 1900 some universities were admitting women, and there were teacher training colleges. Men, especially those who were insecure, felt threatened by the rapid progress in girls’ education, because in the end all-male professions were bound to open up to women. Thus many men refused to consider giving women the vote.
Finally, it can be argued that women did not get the vote just before the First World War because of the wave of Suffragette terrorism which was taking place all over the United Kingdom 1909-1914. Many men were angry about cut telegraph lines, poisoned reservoirs, and smashed shop windows, and those who might have supported women getting the vote turned against them. In 1913 Emily Davidson, a suffragette, was killed trying to disrupt the Derby. She ran in front of the King’s horse and was trampled to death. Many historians believe this final point is the main reason why women did not get the vote. The physical force of the suffragettes and the moral force of the suffragists can be related back to the Chartists when the physical force gave both groups a bad name by the violence of one.