Happy Suffragette Valentine's Day!

This post is a re-publish from 2011, because if there's one thing the Internet doesn't have enough of, it's historical information about the suffragette movement.


I am a big collector of all sorts of things. Useful things, like used milk caps. 

I also like to collect old postcards. They arrive to my (and my husband's!) delight neatly boxed-up from eBay on a regular basis. Sometimes, I purchase postcards directly from among the decaying remains of a lifetime in a house sale or more macabrely, from an estate sale.

Some of my favorite postcards are the ones that are both pro and con women's suffrage. For those of you who like a little history lesson with your blog reading, the women's suffrage movement in the United States was active in the early twentieth century, until voting rights were finally secured in 1920 after a long and contentious battle.

The U.S. suffragettes were a clever group, as were the equally fascinating anti-suffragettes. The arguments from both sides are still very much alive today via the slogans of the many postcards used to promote each side's position. Today, these same goals are accomplished with emails and witty tweets.

I have an endlessly amusing collection of postcards from both sides of the debate, and only recently realized a few of them are Valentine's Day related.  I'm not sure why the holiday-tie-in, but as I also have Mother's Day and Thanksgiving Day suffragette post cards I'm guessing they took advantage of all the holidays to spread their message.

Here is one of my most favorite Valentines Day anti-suffrage cards.  It reads "Woman's sphere is in the home."

And although she's entirely on the wrong side of the debate, there's still something so captivating about the quilter pictured here. The photo doesn't really show it, but that's a real red ribbon winding around the bottom of her skirt, and tiny silver beads around her quilt. Clearly, the anti-suffragettes weren't messing around when it came to showing their superior crafting skills while being in their place at home.



If you want to see additional vintage and suffragette Valentines, don't worry, I have more! Just click here.