Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, challenges the heteronormative framing of the traditional narrative of the campaign for the vote. Her previous two books explored the history of women and children in the Progressive Era: The Children of Chinatown: Growing up Chinese American in San Francisco, 1850 to 1920 and Her Own Hero: The Origins of the Women’s Self-Defense Movement. Rouse is presently Associate Professor of History at San Jose State University where she teaches LGBTQ+ and women’s history.
Rouse applied the “Page 99 Test” to Public Faces, Secret Lives and reported the following:
Page 99 of Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement provides a glimpse into some of the key themes in the larger book. When the reader turns to page 99 they will read a small part of the story of queer suffragist Anne Martin. Martin advocated for women’s right to vote in her home state of Nevada and later fought for the passage of a federal suffrage amendment. But page 99 tells the story of an even earlier time in Martin’s life as a suffragist.Visit Wendy Rouse's website.
Page 99 travels back to 1909 when Martin was living in Britain and working with the suffragists of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). Martin was one of several American suffragists who went to Britain to study the militant strategies of Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the WSPU. Martin participated in the WSPU’s deputations, marching with hundreds of suffragists to Parliament to petition the prime minster for the vote. Martin later used some of the tactics she learned in Britain in the suffrage campaign in the United States.
Martin also participated in the famous Black Friday deputation. This 1910 demonstration in Parliament Square ended violently when police officers physically assaulted suffragists inflicting them with black eyes, bleeding noses, and dislocated joints. Martin, along with over one hundred other suffragists, was arrested and charged with obstructing the police. After this incident, the WSPU decided to once again shift tactics. They launched mass window-breaking campaigns and encouraged other acts of vandalism to make their point heard. They also trained to physically defend themselves against police assault (see Her Own Hero: The Origins of the Women’s Self-Defense Movement).
The snippet of Martin’s story on page 99 describes the important friendships Martin formed in England with other queer suffragists such as Annie Kenney and Evelina Haverfield. Kenney allegedly had romantic relationships with other women in the movement. Haverfield was in a committed relationship with fellow WSPU member Vera “Jack” Holme. Martin continued to rely on the network of queer friendships she created in England in her later suffrage work in the United States.
Page 99 not only demonstrates the significance of queer people to the suffrage movement but the significance of queer relationships in forging the transatlantic alliances that fueled an international women’s right movement. Dive into the book to learn even more about the queer history of the women’s suffrage movement.
The Page 99 Test: Her Own Hero.
--Marshal Zeringue
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