Vision et visibilité : la rhétorique visuelle des suffragistes et des suffragettes britanniques de 1907 à 1914

By the Edwardian period, the Women’s Movement had reached its peak through the unifying claim for female suffrage. The suffragettes’ public disorder, the increasing numbers of activists and supporters and the suffragistand antisuffragistcampaigns showed how inescapable an issue female suffrage was. Even though the suffragettes of the Women’s Social and Political Union provided the most spectacular events, the constitutionalists of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies also took an active part in this vigorous visual campaign. In such a context, suffragist iconography conveyed singularly effective visual rhetoric persuading the Edwardians through varied eye-catching media, shows, processions, posters, postcards, photographs, accessories and many other common objects. Representation thus conveyed the vital necessity of “votes for women” along three major lines:● Locating the Cause on the Edwardian political stage,● Reporting on suffragist activism and activists,● Arguing symbolically that women deserved the vote (immediate effect) and that their imminent enfranchisement would signal further emancipation (delayed effect)