Purple, White & Green: The Material Construction of Women’s Suffrage

This study examines the active role of material culture in the women's suffrage movement, offering new insight into the creative resistance of activists who used objects to convey their message, and the collective identities that were formed and articulated through material culture. It contributes to an emerging area of archaeology concerned with radicalism; this has long been under-explored because of the ephemerality of sources associated with radical movements. With an integrated text and material based analysis, this study focuses on the materiality of women's suffrage, its significance, and the role it played in their successful campaign.

This thesis is divided into four main chapters Makings Worlds, Speaking Out, Direct Action and Legacies of Suffrage Material Culture. In the act of forging new identities and freedoms for themselves, suffrage campaigners made new worlds via objects that commodified and legitimised their cause, merged domestic materials with politics, and created a strong visual legacy. They used printed materials to speak out, spread propaganda and challenge stereotypes perpetuated by the media and commercial publishers. Suffragettes’ use of objects created their militant identity, and they forged complex relationships with the objects used in their direct action. This work makes an original contribution through consideration of all of these ways material culture impacted the movement. The final part of this work takes the understanding of suffrage materials and their legacy to the present day, with an analysis of the enduring legacy of suffrage materiality and the purple, white and green.