Lives Abound in Romantic Interest: Debate over Marriage in the American Woman Suffrage Movement

On the face of a small valentines card a young girl stands with her arms crossed, back resolutely turned towards a bashful boy: “A Valentines Greeting,” the card reads, “I may look like a demure little miss, But this I’ll say, ‘No vote, no kiss.’” Like many other popular suffrage valentines this card promised love and affection for the young man wise enough to support the ballot for women. Antisuffrage postcards, however, warned that once married the husband of a suffragist would find himself in an entirely new situation: “Dont [sic] Worry,” the caption assures the haggard husband surrounding by children, “The Worst Is Yet To Come.”

Such postcards were only one component of a much larger public dialogue about the possible effect of woman’s suffrage on love and marriage. Though arguments against female enfranchisement varied in tone and tenor, many similarly centered on beliefs about natural differences between the sexes and the consequences of collapsing those differences. Antisuffragists capitalized on popular fears by portraying female suffragists as “unwomanly,” “unsexed,” “abnormal,” “non-mothers,” while simultaneously cautioning against “sissy,” “effeminate,” and “unmanly” male suffragists. These gendered political attacks converged when antisuffragists insisted that female enfranchisement would disrupt marriages and destroy families. Opponents frequently claimed that the “long haired men” and “short haired women” who supported women’s suffrage either rejected love and romance, were unhappy in their marriage, or supported free love. Furthermore, antisuffragists predicted that discord and divorce would follow women’s engagement in electoral politics. This project examines these antisuffrage claims and the varying ways that suffragists responded to critiques of their romantic lives and marriages. Ultimately, I explore the ways in which suffragists crafted images of their activism and embraced cultural norms of femininity, masculinity, romance, and marriage that would prove more palatable to antisuffragists, male voters, potential activists, and the general public.

Despite abundant research on the free love movement and efforts to eradicate “white slavery,” the historiography underemphasizes the importance of overlapping debates on sexuality and suffrage in the Progressive Era. Understanding anti- and pro-suffrage public debate about the relationship between the woman’s rights movement and marriage sheds light on changing suffrage political tactics, beliefs about sexuality, and gender ideals in the Progressive Era.