Such had thrown away their crochet
hooks, their tatting-shuttles and fashion articles, their Church
almanacs, and Girl's Own Library books, and read and talked of
social, sexual, and industrial problems that have got to be faced
and solved. Colour came into their cheeks, assurance into their
faded manners, sense and sensibility into their talk; and whatever
happened afterwards they were never crammed back again into the
prison of Victorian spinsterhood. They learnt rough cooking, skilled
confectionery, typewriting, bicycling, jiu-jitsu perhaps. "The
maidens came, they talked, they sang, they read; till she not fair
began to gather light, and she that was became her former beauty
treble" sang in prophecy, sixty years before, the greatest of poets
and the poet-prophet of Woman's Emancipation. Many a woman has
directly owed the lengthened, happier, usefuller life that became
hers from 1910-1911-1912 onwards to the Suffrage movement for the
Liberation of Women.
The crises of 1912 moreover were not so acute as bitterly to envenom
the struggle in the way that happened during the two following
years. There was always some hope that the Ministry might permit the
passing of an amendment to the Franchise Bill which would in some
degree affirm the principle of Female Suffrage. It is true that a
certain liveliness was maintained by the Suffragettes.
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