The Women's March

A Novel of the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession

Jennifer Chiaverini

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780062976024
• eBook ISBN: 9780062976048
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini returns with The Women’s March, an enthralling historical novel of the women’s suffrage movement inspired by three courageous women who bravely risked their lives and liberty in the fight to win the vote.

Twenty-five-year-old Alice Paul returns to her native New Jersey after several years on the front lines of the suffrage movement in Great Britain. Weakened from imprisonment and hunger strikes, she is nevertheless determined to invigorate the stagnant suffrage movement in her homeland. Nine states have already granted women voting rights, but only a constitutional amendment will secure the vote for all.

To inspire support for the campaign, Alice organizes a magnificent procession down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, the day before the inauguration of President-elect Woodrow Wilson, a firm antisuffragist.

Joining the march is thirty-nine-year-old New Yorker Maud Malone, librarian and advocate for women’s and workers’ rights. The daughter of Irish immigrants, Maud has acquired a reputation—and a criminal record—for interrupting politicians’ speeches with pointed questions they’d rather ignore.

Civil rights activist and journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett resolves that women of color must also be included in the march—and the proposed amendment. Born into slavery in Mississippi, Ida worries that white suffragists may exclude Black women if it serves their own interests.

On March 3, 1913, the glorious march commences, but negligent police allow vast crowds of belligerent men to block the parade route—jeering, shouting threats, assaulting the marchers—endangering not only the success of the demonstration but the women’s very lives.

Inspired by actual events, The Women’s March offers a fascinating account of a crucial but little-remembered moment in American history, a turning point in the struggle for women’s rights. 

1

January 1910

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

Alice

A bracing, icy gust of wind threatened to snatch away Alice’s wide-brimmed black hat and cast it into the churning wake of the steamship SS Haverford as it slowly cruised up the Delaware River, but she clasped her hand to the crown just in time and kept it atop her mass of long black hair, coiled into a loose bun at the back of her head. A few stray wisps tickled her face as she secured the hat pin and returned her hand to the warmth of her fur muff, but her gaze never left the distant pier as the ship approached the Port of Philadelphia. Despite the wintry bluster, Alice would not dream of abandoning her spot at the railing for the comfort of the upper deck’s salon, not when she was so close to her destination and the welcoming embraces of those she loved best in all the world.

The Haverford had departed Liverpool on January 5, and now, after a stormy, uncomfortable fortnight at sea, it was about to arrive, four days late, on the snow-dusted shores of Alice’s homeland. After nearly three years abroad, she wanted nothing more than to bask in the generous affection of her loved ones and to indulge in the comforts of Paulsdale, her family’s 173-acre farm in Moorestown, New Jersey, an idyllic, pastoral haven fifteen miles east of the bustling city of Philadelphia, on the opposite side of the Delaware. She had promised her mother and herself that once she was safely home, she would rest, fully recover her health—which had suffered greatly during her last stint in prison—and sort out how to resume her graduate studies. She would be the first to admit that in recent months, she had neglected her formal education in favor of her suffrage work, her life’s true cause and calling.

As the ship came into harbor, Alice scanned the crowd gathered on the pier below for her mother and siblings, not knowing who, precisely, had come to meet her, but confident that some beloved family members stood among the throng. The ship’s horn bellowed overhead, two long blasts; while sailors and dockworkers tossed ropes and deftly secured knots, the passengers shifted in anticipation as the ramps were made ready for their descent.

Alice was the last passenger to disembark. Although her legs trembled and her gray wool dress, white linen blouse, and black coat felt heavy and loose upon her thin frame, her heart lifted and her footsteps quickened at the thought of the joyful welcome awaiting her ashore. Searching the upturned faces as she descended, she glimpsed her mother, clad in the plain dark dress, dark cloak, and white cap of their Quaker faith. Her fourteen-year-old brother, Parry, stood at their mother’s side; catching her eye, he grinned and waved his arm high overhead, rising up on his toes. He must have grown four inches since she had last seen him, and he resembled their late father so keenly that her breath caught in her throat.

Overcome with happiness and relief, Alice made her way through the crowd and surrendered herself to her mother’s and youngest brother’s warm embraces—but the moment was quickly spoiled when a swarm of reporters descended, shouting her name, gesturing for her attention, interrupting their family reunion with a dizzying onslaught of questions.

“Shall I clear a path through them to the car?” Parry asked eagerly as their mother drew closer and took his arm. She barely managed a tentative smile for the reporters.

Weary and longing to get out of the cold, Alice was tempted to accept the offer, but she shook her head. Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters—in fact, any of the courageous, daring British suffragists with whom she had campaigned and suffered during her three years abroad—would have gladly seized the opportunity to promote the cause, so how could she refuse? As much as Alice dreaded public speaking and longed for a warm fire and a hot meal, if an interview would evoke sympathy and understanding for the woman suffrage movement, it would be time well spent.

“Miss Paul,” shouted one eager fellow over the clamor of questions, “how does it feel to be back in America?”

“Quite lovely indeed,” she replied, with a fond smile for her mother and brother. She longed to see their two middle siblings, Helen and Bill, and hoped they were waiting for her at Paulsdale.

“Tell us, Mrs. Paul,” the same reporter queried, turning to Alice’s mother, “how does your daughter look?”

“If I’m to be honest—” She ran an appraising glance over her eldest daughter. “Not so well as when she left us to go abroad, I’m sorry to say.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Alice answered for herself, gently resting a hand on her mother’s arm. “I’m as physically able to wage an equally active campaign in this country as I did abroad, if I find it necessary.”

“By ‘active campaign,’” another reporter broke in, pencil at the ready, “do you mean the same outlandish tactics you learned with the Brits, breaking windows and wearing disguises and such?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Alice replied. “Over there, you have to stand on your head or do some other foolish thing just to attract attention. Suffragettes tried everything to present the cause before the political powers that be, but each attempt met with failure until we resorted to more militant tactics.”

“Miss Paul,” called another reporter, a woman this time. “Why do you say ‘suffragette’ instead of ‘suffragist’? Dr. Anna Shaw and Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt prefer the term ‘suffragist.’”

“We all called ourselves suffragists once,” said Alice. “Eventually the British authorities began referring to those of us with a more activist bent as suffragettes, disparagingly, to distinguish us from our demurer, better-behaved sisters. We’ve chosen to embrace the title. We understand, as others may not, that we had to resort to unusual tactics to force the authorities to acknowledge the movement. England is reluctant to accept suffrage, and had the suffragettes gone along quietly, we would have been entirely ignored.”

A reporter with gray threaded in his dark hair frowned. “Once you were in prison, though, why didn’t you just follow the rules? So you suffered in Holloway. Big deal. You brought it upon yourself.”

Alice regarded him calmly, unfazed by his hostile tone. “We suffragettes decided more than a year ago to resist prison passively by taking no food and by refusing to obey any of the regulations. Our purpose was to make the situation more acute, and consequently, bring it to an end sooner.” Turning to her mother, she added in an undertone, “It is simply a policy of passive resistance, and as a Quaker, thou ought to approve.”

Before her mother could reply, another reporter called out a question. More queries followed, most of them about forced feedings and the more lurid aspects of her experiences, but when Alice’s voice began to falter, her mother firmly bade them farewell and Parry hefted her two suitcases by the handles, brandishing them like shields, or so it seemed to Alice, as they made their way through the crowd. Flanking her protectively, her mother and brother escorted her away from the docks and out to the street, where Frank Stout, a kindly neighbor whose farm abutted theirs, waited to carry them home in his black Ford Runabout.

“Bill and Helen are waiting for thee at home,” Alice’s mother said as Mr. Stout started the engine, answering Alice’s unspoken question. Alice and her siblings used the formal “thee” and “thou” within the family and with others in their Quaker community, but used the less formal address with people of other faiths.

“I can’t wait to see them,” said Alice fervently. It had been far too long, and her siblings’ letters, while essential to easing her homesickness, had conveyed only a fraction of the happiness and affection she felt in their company. The four siblings had always been close, and they had acquired a deeper appreciation of one another after they had lost their strict but beloved father to pneumonia eight years before. A bank president as well as a gentleman farmer, William Paul had required an orderly and disciplined household in the Quaker tradition, and although Alice could not say that they had been as close as some fathers and daughters, she did not doubt that he had loved her.

At the time of her father’s passing, Alice had been a sophomore at Swarthmore College, her mother’s alma mater, a Quaker institution where the “thee” and “thy” of the plain people was still spoken, just as it was among her family. Even so, at college Alice had discovered new freedoms: She had been permitted to wear colorful clothing, unlike the somber, monochromatic dresses and white caps she had grown up with. Music was allowed, and not only hymns; she and her classmates could even dance, albeit only with one another, never with young men. She had begun her freshman year as a biology major, a discipline she had chosen because she knew nothing about the subject and was curious. Eventually she found her interest waning, and by the start of her junior year, a wise and kindly professor had guided her toward social work.

It seemed a natural fit, for Alice had been taught to revere education and social justice almost from birth. After graduating from Swarthmore, she had moved to Manhattan to study social work at the New York School of Philanthropy. A summer toiling on behalf of the suffering indigent at the settlement house on the Lower East Side convinced her that the need was great, but the work was not for her. “I help only one person at a time, one day after another,” she lamented to her mother. “It feels like sculpting a block of granite with a hairpin. My best efforts seem to make little difference. I can’t truly change anything this way.”

Adjusting course, that fall she had enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania to pursue her master’s degree in sociology with a minor in political science and economics. After she had completed her degree, the local Quaker community awarded her a scholarship to study at Woodbrooke, a Society of Friends institution in Birmingham, England. Grateful for the opportunity and determined to make the most of it, she spent a few months in Berlin to improve her German before moving to England to begin her classes at Woodbrooke, to volunteer at the Friends’ settlement house, and to enroll in the commerce department at the University of Birmingham, the first woman ever to do so.

It was in Birmingham that she met the woman who would irrevocably change her life.

Though only twenty-seven, Christabel Pankhurst had already won infamy as a firebrand suffragist, interrupting politicians’ speeches, provoking the police to arrest her, and invigorating the movement through the Women’s Social and Political Union, which she had founded with her mother, Emmeline. On a cold December evening in 1907, when Miss Pankhurst was scheduled to speak on woman suffrage at the University of Birmingham, curiosity compelled Alice to attend. As Miss Pankhurst took the stage, Alice observed that she was the very antithesis of the usual cruel caricature of the suffragette—delicately beautiful, with fair skin, rosy cheeks, wide-set blue eyes, a sweet expression, and softly curling dark hair. As to the quality of her voice, Alice learned nothing. To her shock and indignation, when Miss Pankhurst took the podium, she was greeted by a chorus of deep bellows and jeers from the mostly male audience. Unable to make herself heard, she was obliged to quit the stage.

The male students had little time to savor their triumph. Appalled by their lack of decorum, the university administration invited Miss Pankhurst back to campus, but for her return engagement, a revered professor introduced her with a profound apology for the rude welcome she had received on her previous visit. The abashed young men remained silent throughout, but whether they were truly contrite or merely afraid to provoke their professor’s ire, Alice did not know.

As for herself, she was enthralled.

Miss Pankhurst’s insightful, affecting discourse illuminated the connection between women’s disenfranchisement and the vast host of ills that tormented their sex, from forced dependence to poverty to sexual exploitation and on and on. Her truths stirred something deep within Alice’s heart, something that as a Quaker she recognized as a Concern, the same heightened awareness that had compelled her forebears to embrace nonviolence and abolition.

From that day forward, Alice was a heart-and-soul convert to the cause.

She joined the militant suffragists in frequent marches, demonstrations, and demands for an audience with the prime minister. She participated in outdoor rallies and distributed handbills. On a beautiful, sunny Sunday in June 1908, she donned a white dress and striped sash—purple for dignity, green for hope, and white for purity—and traveled to London to join the largest suffrage demonstration in the city’s history. Suffrage advocates in seven one-mile processions strolled and sang and held banners proclaiming VOTES FOR WOMEN as they wound through the streets and converged on Hyde Park, where Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst and others addressed the crowd from seven platforms. Tens of thousands turned out for the event, which was almost universally regarded as a tremendous success.

And yet Prime Minister Asquith was unmoved. Though the suffragists expected some substantial response to the overwhelming evidence of public support for the cause, instead he declared that he had no plans to add equal suffrage measures to an upcoming reform bill.

Outraged and indignant, the women refused to be deterred.

Soon thereafter, a pair of suffragists hurled rocks through the windows of 10 Downing Street and were arrested. Similar provocative acts led to more arrests. Alice threw no stones, but she attended rallies, worked as a street newsie selling the WSPU’s newspaper, and delivered impromptu speeches in parks, on street corners, and on tube platforms. Though she struggled to overcome her stage fright, to make ends meet, and to balance her studies with her activism, she was absolutely certain that the sacrifices were justified.

Her work for the cause impressed the movement’s leaders, but she did not realize how much until she received a letter inviting her to join a special deputation to Parliament led by Emmeline Pankhurst. “It is quite probable that you would be under some danger of being arrested and imprisoned,” the letter warned, “so you must not accept this invitation unless you were willing to do this.”

Alice had heard dreadful tales of Holloway Prison from sister suffragists who had been confined there, and the thought of its horrors made her heart pound and her mouth go dry. The uncomfortable uniforms of coarse, scratchy fabric worn over pinching antique corsets. The rough, forcible body searches by belligerent matrons. The wooden planks that served as beds in the small, cramped, cold, stifling cells. The foul, repulsive meals of watery gruel, thin slices of bread, lard pudding, and greasy potatoes. Outdoor exercise limited to slow marches around the prison yard three times a week, with a distance of nine feet between each prisoner and conversation absolutely forbidden. Yet as terrible as enduring such trials would be, what Alice dreaded most was the effect upon her friends and family back in the States, especially her mother. They would consider her arrest a shocking disgrace. How could Alice risk inflicting such shame and embarrassment upon them? And yet, how could she not agree to pursue equality and justice wherever her heart led her?

On the evening of June 29, 1909, Alice joined two hundred suffragists in a march down Victoria Street to the House of Commons. A rider on horseback and a drum and fife band playing “La Marseillaise” led the way past thousands of eager onlookers who lined the pavement in hopes of witnessing a spectacle. The protest had been announced days before, and, noting that there was “a reason to think that an unusually large number of persons may be anxious to come into Parliament-square,” Scotland Yard had issued a warning to the public “of the danger necessarily created by the assembling of a large number of persons in a restricted area.” That very day, the afternoon papers had reported that the House had debated whether to allow the delegation to address them, with one member demanding that the leaders be admitted if they agreed to behave in an orderly manner, and most other MPs ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue: October 19, 1912
• 1. January 1910
• 2. May 1910
• 3. March 1912
• 4. June–July 1912
• 5. October 1912
• 6. October 1912
• 7. October 1912
• 8. November 1912
• 9. November 1912
• 10. November 1912
• 11. Late November 1912
• 12. December 1912
• 13. December 1912
• 14. January 1913
• 15. January 1913
• 16. January 1913
• 17. January 1913
• 18. February 1913
• 19. February 1913
• 20. February 1913
• 21. February 1913
• 22. February 1913
• 23. Late February 1913
• 24. Late February 1913
• 25. February 28–March 2, 1913
• 26. March 3, 1913
• 27. March 3, 1913
• 28. March 1913
• Author’s Note
• Acknowledgments
• P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
• Also by Jennifer Chiaverini
• Copyright
• About the Publisher