17 Facts About Dora Marsden

Dora Marsden was an English suffragette, editor of literary journals, and philosopher of language.

Dora Marsden was born on 5 March 1882 to working-class parents, Fred and Hannah, in Marsden, Yorkshire.

Hannah worked as a seamstress to support her remaining children, which left the family living in poverty when Dora Marsden was a child.

Dora Marsden proved a successful student, working as a tutor at the age of thirteen before receiving a Queen's Scholarship at the age of eighteen, which enabled her to attend Owens College in Manchester.

In 1903, Dora Marsden graduated from college and taught school for several years, eventually becoming headmistress of the Altrincham Teacher-Pupil Center in 1908.

In October 1909, Dora Marsden was arrested with several other members of the Women's Social and Political Union for dressing in full academic regalia and interrupting a speech by the chancellor of their alma mater, demanding that he speak out against the force-feeding of imprisoned suffragist alumni who were on hunger strike.

Dora Marsden was arrested with a deputation to Parliament which was widely reported at the time.

In 1911, Dora Marsden mutually agreed with the Pankhursts to resign her position with the WSPU.

Dora Marsden was not the only English suffragette to balk at the rigid hierarchy of the WSPU under the Pankhursts, and she decided to begin publishing a journal, The Freewoman, that would showcase a wide range of dissenting voices from the women's movement initially, and eventually from other radical movements as well.

Consensus seems to rest on the sense that the journals reflect Dora Marsden's shifting political and aesthetic interests, so that the three journals are closely related, but not identical projects, with The New Freewoman closer in spirit to The Egoist than either was to the original journal.

In 1911, Dora Marsden was becoming increasingly interested in egoism and individualist anarchism, an intellectual shift whose development is plainly visible in her editorial columns, where, as the issues progress, the scope of discussion widens to include a wide range of topics pertinent to anarchist theoreticians of the time.

The Freewoman was a short-lived magazine that Dora Marsden founded in order to voice her thoughts and critiques of the WSPU under Pankhurst.

Dora Marsden argued that the organization was far too narrowly focused on middle class women.

Dora Marsden held that monogamy had four cornerstones: men's hypocrisy; the spinster's dumb resignation; the Prostitute's unsightly degradation; and the married woman's monopoly.

Dora Marsden explored the idea that women had been taught to restrain their passions for life, resulting in an existence only used for reproduction.

In 1935 Dora Marsden was admitted to the Crichton Royal Hospital located in Dumfries where she lived for the rest of her life.

Dora Marsden died of a heart attack on 13 December 1960.