Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel
This biography of suffragist and political activist Sylvia Pankhurst is a giant doorstopper of a book, exhaustively researched but not, surprisingly, exhausting to read. Holmes is such an engaging writer, and the stories she recounts are so compelling, that reading this massive tome turns out to be a massive pleasure.
Holmes’s guiding principle seems to be that one cannot fully understand Sylvia’s life without discovering the stories of her two remarkable parents, her sisters, her brother, her lovers, and the various social movements in which she was engaged, from suffrage for women to anti-colonialism. Sylvia, unlike her famous mother (Emmeline) and older sister (Christabel), not only cared about voting rights for women, she was also deeply concerned about injustice wherever she found it, from the struggles of Irish laborers to the starving women and children of the East End of London. She was staunchly antiwar, a position that alienated her from her family as well as from the wealthy supporters for her initiatives to help poor women. Nevertheless, she persisted and wound up developing educational and social policies that guided later governments and organizations into more humane practices.
The narrative contains a plethora of love stories, acts of heroism, and outrageous villains. (Winston Churchill is no hero in this story!) It also explores the many tragedies Pankhurst and her family endured. The loss of her father, her brother, and a beloved aunt early in her life only strengthened her resolve to leave behind a more just world.
Today’s activists could benefit from reading this detailed and riveting account of a woman whose life exemplified an unwavering commitment to “deeds, not words.” However, one need not be an activist to find this book a fascinating exploration of the not-so-distant past.
