ABSTRACT
This article draws on compilations and collections of essays published between 1917 and 1936 to examine how suffragists and labour women, active in the movement before the war, measured the impact of enfranchisement and offered public reflections on developments in the women’s movement after 1918. The process of retrospective and prospective analysis on the part of activists who continued to campaign in the interwar period runs counter to the narratives of demise and defeat which figure so prominently in the history of interwar feminism. These sources reveal the idealism and pragmatism which provided the impetus for complex struggles on an evergrowing variety of fronts. The article also stresses the importance of a reflexive approach to sources from the period and the discursive strategies of participants in order to foster a more comprehensive understanding of debates about feminism in the interwar period.
