It is really late, again, and I don’t have anything profound to share….or unburden, depending on your point of view. I did think about Jean today, about life as a woman in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century, before a widespread women’s rights movement. I was thinking about the conversation about feminism between my mother’s generation and mine, and wondering what my great-grandmother Jean might have to add, given that her lifetime spanned the period before women could vote and when they could. For some reason, I thought women could vote earlier than 1920 in the UK, but that is not the case. It was eight years later when the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 gave women the right to vote in the UK.
It is frustrating that I don’t know anything about her, except what pieces I can glean from a few documents and pictures. My father can remember my great-grandmother but of course, he probably did not talk to her about her history, much less her views on women’s right to vote. And I did not ask enough questions about her, of my grandmother, with whom I spent a lot of time. I feel guilty, in a strange way, that I am giving in to my imagination and not letting well enough alone with the facts.
Before I move onto the next generation or the next decades of their lives, I want to include a couple other pictures of Jean. I think she must be married, when the pictures are taken, because I can see a wedding ring in one of them.
I did not mention this before, but I wonder if one reason she looks like she has an attitude is due to the fact she was barely five feet tall. Was she drawing herself up to be as tall as she could? 🙂 That’s sort of an endearing thought. Apparently, she was even shorter than my grandmother, who was 5’2″, on her best day. (Ivy got my great-grandfather’s height, which made her being loud and combative even more intimidating. Poor Ivy. She’s not faring well in the annals of my history, is she?)
There are no dates on these photos, unfortunately. I really like the hats.
