Irene Parlby, "What Business Have Women in
Politics?" 1935.
I never realized until my first campaign in 1921 what
miserable incompetent creatures women were in the eyes of
the public. I ought to have developed a terrible inferiority
complex by the time it was over, for practically the only
issue that seemed to concern the electorate or the
opposition, was that I was a woman and worse an English
woman. . . .
Irene Parlby, letter to Violet McNaughton, July
22, 1921.
It has been the dirtiest possible fight, but we won out
with about 1,000 majority. . . .
I feel that if I can help to smash this hideous party
machine and free people from its yoke it will have been
worth it. I feel as if I had been through rivers of mud and
could never be clean again, or trust anyone again—
Some who had been pretending most to be our friends we
found were traitors—and the venom of the Alix women—you
could not believe—they were literally mad with spite! And
the whole masonic bunch and the Institute worked like the
devil against me, and no lie was too vile to be used. . . .
Reprinted by permission of
Women's
Press. |