Sacred to Female Patriotism by Judith Lewis S

Author:Judith Lewis S [S, Judith Lewis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Reference, Europe, Great Britain
ISBN: 9781136761614
Google: 5ZF6EHGYuLsC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-05-13T03:35:22+00:00

This is especially appalling because of the way it constructs women as a binary “other.” According to this point of view, there is no difference between Armenians and law-abiding British subjects. Nor does it recognize the conventional political role taken by women of the duchess’ class, because now there really is no difference between prostitutes and aristocrats. All women are the same—they are without country, without class, without any but a sexual identity. They are simply “the Sex.” Thus, the gender card was introduced.

Like any card, though, it had two sides. If it wore the nasty squib on one side, it proudly proclaimed the virtues of female patriotism on the other. For indeed, Fox’s great victory in the constituency was generally attributed to the efforts of the Duchess of Devonshire. Just as she was hailed at the beginning of the contest, so she was at the end of the prolonged contest. Once again, Fox was chaired through the Devonshire House courtyard. But this time, the carriages of his female canvassers were in the procession, following behind the banner inscribed “Sacred to Female Patriotism.”74

As should be clear by now, the Duchess of Devonshire was hardly rebelling against either her family or her society by participating in the Westminster election. If anything, her participation was assumed to be part of her responsibilities to the Cavendishes. When she got sick of the abuse and wished to retire, it was family members such as Lord John Cavendish and the Duke and Duchess of Portland who urged her to continue.75 Indeed, among all relations, it is telling that it was her mother alone who objected to her role, and it was only her mother who felt that she was being exploited by Fox and the Cavendishes.

Given the gravity of the election and the tensions it produced, the negative campaigning of the Wray side created some backlash of sympathy for the duchess and her colleagues. And for the already avid fans of Fox, the campaign itself was a sign of how morally and constitutionally untrustworthy Pitt and his supporters really were. Having asserted the reality of women’s constitutional rights, the Fox campaign could hardly attack Wray’s female canvassers. But knowing perfectly well that the Pittites also had active female supporters, the hypocrisy of the Wray supporters must have been sickening. The consequence was that the duchess’ continued campaigning in the face of the mudslinging became a real rallying point for the Foxites. Her political passion and effectiveness with voters, combined with her courage under the abusive Wray campaign, made the duchess a heroine and patriot to many. She was, after all, sacrificing herself for her country. And this, too, is reflected in the cartoons and squibs of the period, although they have been less frequently recalled by historians.

These cartoons are, of course, Foxite propaganda, but then the nasty ones— which have all too often been used by historians to depict supposedly essentialist eighteenth-century attitudes—were partisan products of the Wray campaign. In “The apotheosis of the Dutchess,”

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