With All Her Might: The Life of Gertrude Harding, Militant Suffragette

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, and the author of Kurlek, Margaret Laurence: The
Long Journey Home, and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

We know that British Suffragettes chained themselves to iron railings in
front of their Parliament buildings; but how many have heard how these
women carried wooden clubs to protect their leaders from violent police
officers, threw stones through the windows of Number Ten Downing Street,
and were nearly killed by force-feedings in prison?

With All Her Might has two linked themes: the life of Gertrude Harding
(1889–1977), and the long and violent fight by British women to win
their constitutional rights.

Harding, born and raised on a farm in New Brunswick, joined forces with
the Brits in 1912. For the next half a dozen years she fought for
suffrage while also supporting the war effort, as did other
Suffragettes. Women were granted the right to vote in February 1918.
Their dramatic battle deserves retelling in each generation. Harding’s
personal story, which includes the destruction of some rare orchids in
the greenhouses of Kew Gardens, could not be understood without this
context.

Journalist-broadcaster Gretchen Wilson, also a New Brunswicker, is
Harding’s great-niece. As a child, she heard “Aunt Gert’s”
stories; as an adult, Wilson rediscovered Harding’s papers, sketches,
and photographs. The papers are short, but Wilson makes good use of
them. Pas-sages from Harding’s journals are marked with a tiny image
of a woman marcher with a banner taken from Harding’s own amusing
sketches.

Led by mother and daughter Emmeline and Christobel Pankhurst, the
Suffragettes believed that militancy was necessary for achieving their
basic rights. Wilson’s version of their story is well told and well
researched, with notes and a bibliography.

Gretchen Wilson’s first book deserves a standing ovation.