Emmeline Pankhurst - Childhood

Childhood

The Gouldens included their children in social activism. As part of the movement to end slavery in the US, Goulden welcomed American abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher when he visited Manchester. Sophia Jane Goulden used the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin – written by Beecher's sister Harriet Beecher Stowe – as a regular source of bedtime stories for their sons and daughters. In her 1914 autobiography My Own Story, Pankhurst recalls visiting a bazaar at a young age to collect money for newly-freed slaves in the United States.

Pankhurst began to read books when she was very young – according to one source, at the age of three. She read the Odyssey at the age of nine and enjoyed the works of John Bunyan, especially his 1678 story The Pilgrim's Progress. Another of her favourite books was Thomas Carlyle's three-volume treatise The French Revolution: A History; she later said the work "remained all my life a source of inspiration."

Despite her avid consumption of books, however, Emmeline was not given the educational advantages enjoyed by her brothers. Their parents believed that the girls needed most to learn the art of "making home attractive" and other skills desired by potential husbands. The Gouldens deliberated carefully about future plans for their sons' education, but they expected their daughters to marry young and avoid paid work. Although they supported women's suffrage and the general advancement of women in society, the Gouldens believed their daughters incapable of the goals of their male peers. Feigning sleep one evening as her father came into her bedroom, Emmeline Goulden heard him pause and say to himself: "What a pity she wasn't born a lad."

It was through her parents' interest in women's suffrage that Pankhurst was first introduced to the subject. Her mother received and read the Women's Suffrage Journal, and Pankhurst grew fond of its editor, Lydia Becker. At the age of 14, she returned home from school one day to find her mother on her way to a public meeting about women's voting rights. After learning that Becker would be speaking, she insisted on attending. Pankhurst was enthralled by Becker's address and wrote later: "I left the meeting a conscious and confirmed suffragist."

A year later she arrived in Paris to attend the École Normale de Neuilly. The school provided its female students with classes in chemistry and bookkeeping, in addition to traditionally feminine arts such as embroidery. Her roommate was Noémie, the daughter of Henri Rochefort, who had been imprisoned in New Caledonia for his support of the Paris Commune. The girls shared tales of their parents' political exploits, and remained good friends for years. Pankhurst was so fond of Noémie and the school that after graduating she returned with her sister Mary as a parlour boarder. Noémie had married a Swiss painter and quickly found a suitable French husband for her English friend. When Robert Goulden refused to provide a dowry for his daughter, the man withdrew his offer of marriage and Pankhurst returned, miserable, to Manchester.