George Dangerfield Suffragette

The unparalleled power of ‘first’ histories is revealed through George Dangerfield’s 1935 novel, The Strange Death of Liberal England, in creating a paradigm for which “subsequent historians have seldom been able to free themselves”. Attesting the Suffragette Movement as a major cause for the downfall of the Liberal Party in 1924, Dangerfield presents a distorted view of the past through the shrewd lens of comedy. Coupled with his persuasive writing, Dangerfield fabricates a fictitious narrative, as he labels the Pankhurst’s as “actors” in his grand “drama”. Such a blatant dismissal of the Suffragettes as mere blimps on the historical radar was standard within the androcentric realm of women’s history. Indeed, the predominantly male readership may have influence as reinforcing gender stereotypes appealed to the interests of male elites. Hence, perhaps it is equally the gender of the historian, and their audience that shapes their interpretation.
The exclusively male political landscape in which Dangerfield was writing may have influenced his depiction of the Suffragette’s as otherworldly, and alien in their attempt to subvert this notion. This absurd concept of females entering politics laid the foundation for his comical rendition of the movement. Hence, the vehicle of comedy permits a farcical distraction
Her inability to separate the personal from the political coupled with the subjectivity of the human memory hinders her capacity to construct an objective history. Whilst objectivity may have not been her intention, subsequent historians have rarely acknowledged this. In fact, even her claim that the vote was secured by her arrangement for Asquith to receive her East End Delegation in June 1914 remains undisputed. Perhaps it is because her story is