A History of the Girl by Mary O'Dowd & June Purvis

Author:Mary O'Dowd & June Purvis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

The other two sisters also made contributions to Home News. Sylvia drew the illustrations and also wrote a series of short essays on the topic of walks in London , which Christabel helped her copy into the journal. The six-year-old Adela did not wish to be excluded from this enterprise and dictated to Christabel a long story about a destitute widow with a large family who was taken out of poverty by the kindness of a rich benefactor.37

Of a calmer temperament than Sylvia and Adela, Christabel is the only one of the three Pankhurst girls who mentions the importance of music in the household . ‘Life in those days was not all politics’, she recollected. ‘There were hours given to music-making … Mother had a moving contralto voice. Father hardly knew one tune from the other—but he loved to hear his wife sing. We children would be admitted to the drawing-room for a while, and even after banishment to bed we could still hear the music through open doors and fall asleep listening’.38 Perhaps Sylvia and Adela forgot about this aspect of their childhood. Perhaps they regarded it as unimportant, not worth recording.

Sylvia’s account of her childhood , which, as noted, has become the dominant narrative of life in the early Pankhurst household, is a tale of woe. She praises her idealistic Socialist father and continually criticises her overworked, practical mother. She recollects how her father held strong Socialist ideals and would encourage all the four children to be ambitious and to work hard, not for themselves but for others, for the common good of humankind. Throughout their childhood he would say to them, ‘My children are the four pillars of my house!’ and ask, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ urging them to ‘Get something to earn your living by that you like and can do’. He insisted that ‘[l]ife is nothing without enthusiasms!’ as he encouraged them to work for worthwhile causes. ‘If you do not grow up to help other people you will not have been worth the upbringing!’ was another one of his frequent sayings. ‘Drudge and drill!’ and ‘To do, to be, and to suffer!’ were other common exhortations as the earnest, middle-aged father tried to instill in his children a sense of duty toward the less fortunate in society and the necessity of hard work.39

Yet, despite remembering these enthusiasms, Sylvia also writes of how her young years were torn by the ‘anguish of ethical struggle, and depression descending into agony and despair for trivial failings, of longing for affection, and misery at being misunderstood’.40 She claims that her mother treated her less favorably than Christabel and that she was often disciplined by the servants for dawdling behind when her boots were too tight or for refusing to eat her cold, lumpy porridge or to take her cod liver oil.41 Her mother is described as a stickler for discipline, tolerating ‘no likes and dislikes’, while her adored father, who could presumably

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