ABSTRACT
It has been established that the outbreak of the First W orId War resulted in a major disruption to the ongoing struggle to obtain the vote for British women, yet ironically the many repercussions of the conflict may have been influential in ensuring that in 1918 many women were enfranchised for the first time. By 1914, the various organisations which constituted the campaign for women's suffrage already formed a very complex matrix. Its many components took the form of the numerous suffrage societies including the NUWSS, the WSPU, the WFL and the ELFS among others. Each of these took a very different approach to the war and some of the larger societies, such as the NUWSS, suffered further internal divisions as a result of the wide range of political views held by members. For individuals, the war sometimes brought divided loyalties and caused a shift in attitudes towards the campaign that had seemed so important for so long. Two such interesting individuals are writer and campaigner Cecily Hamilton and novelist May Sinclair. Both had been active in the suffrage campaign in the years leading up to 1914; both made great personal investment in the war. Their war fiction gives a fascinating insight into the complex interface between the old cause and the new, sometimes with surprising conclusions.
