‘Tearing Off the Bonds’: Suffrage Visual Culture in Australia, New Zealand and the USA, 1890–1920

Article

Stevenson, Ana. 2025. "‘Tearing Off the Bonds’: Suffrage Visual Culture in Australia, New Zealand and the USA, 1890–1920." Gender and History. 37 (1), pp. 234-266. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12694
Article Title

‘Tearing Off the Bonds’: Suffrage Visual Culture in Australia, New Zealand and the USA, 1890–1920

ERA Journal ID7107
Article CategoryArticle
AuthorsStevenson, Ana
Journal TitleGender and History
Journal Citation37 (1), pp. 234-266
Number of Pages33
Year2025
PublisherJohn Wiley & Sons
Place of PublicationUnited Kingdom
ISSN0953-5233
1468-0424
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12694
Web Address (URL)https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0424.12694
Abstract

This article will examine how transpacific suffrage visual culture imagined and reimagined an artistic tradition centred
around the figure of the bound woman. White suffragists and anti-suffragists in Australia, New Zealand and the United States used the iconography of bonds, chains and whips to mediate the possibility of women’s enfranchisement. Haunted by the legacies of settler colonialism, suffrage cartoons directly and obliquely evoked the spectre of chattel slavery, convict transportation and incarceration alongside the elusive ideals of humanitarian reform. While anti-suffrage cartoons lamented the prospect of women’s enfranchisement, pro-suffrage cartoons appropriated this iconography primarily for the benefit of white women.

KeywordsNew Zealand; cartoons; visual culture; suffrage; Australia; United States
Contains Sensitive ContentDoes not contain sensitive content
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020430309. Gender history
430312. Histories of race
430313. History of empires, imperialism and colonialism
Byline AffiliationsUniSQ College
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