Ok, yet another research paper update! So I think I am going to focus on the suffrage music of Ethel Smyth. I still want to examine her early life and look at what exactly influenced her involvement in the women’s suffrage movement in England.
I’m excited because I’ve already found some helpful articles as well as a copy of her memoirs from the library. Within those articles I also found some of the songs that Ethel Smyth wrote for the women’s suffrage movement, mostly songs for various events and protests. I think these would make for a very interesting part of the presentation part of my project. I’m not exactly sure how yet, maybe I can find recordings of them or record them myself, but I find them really interesting and hope other people will as well.
From the research I have done thus far, Ethel Smyth was really a woman ahead of her time, extremely strong willed and defiant. She completely disobeyed her father and continued to protest until she was allowed to go to Leipzig to study music. Finally he gave in and she was allowed to go. She was also an acquaintance of Brahms, he referred to her as das Kind, and later in her life fell in love with Virginia Wolf.
I have a lot of information to sort through, but I am actually very interested in this topic and that is exciting to me. Imagine writing a paper that is actually intriguing! I’m really hoping there’s enough information out there as to how this woman, born in the Victorian era, became such an outspoken and rebellious individual. I think I came across something when I was exploring paper topics about Smyth having been arrested at some point due to her involvement with the women’s suffrage movement.
These sorts of topics are always fascinating to me, why or how people become what they become; looking back in history and retracing the events and steps taken in an individual’s life to make them who they were. And for someone as bold as Ethel Smyth I’m sure this is going to be especially interesting.
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