ABSTRACT
Historically, shame has proven to be a highly versatile emotion. Part of its versatility has been because it is supported by a large family of related emotions. There are numerous variants and connected emotions, like humiliation, disgrace, indignation, dishonour, and embarrassment. There are, therefore, many ways of articulating shame and shame-related feelings. There are also many emotional virtues that, if transgressed, can elicit shame, for example, honour, courage, and chivalry. Shame’s historic versatility has also been supported by the fact that shame is an ever-present emotion; it is always present because it is always anticipated. This chapter argues that, whatever their nationalist differences, patriotic British, Irish, and Australian women all acknowledged the ever-present threat of shame—the ever-present fear that their views and values would be judged deficient. Significantly, for historical evaluations of the tenacity of shame as an attempted means of social control, the chapter also concludes that shame did not disappear once early twentieth-century feminist or nationalist campaigns ceased. Shame and its related emotions re-emerged in gendered remembrances of these once deviant women. To demonstrate this, the chapter examines the memory of notoriously disruptive British suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst and infamous Irish nationalist militant Constance Markievicz.
