A remarkable dreamer: review of Miss Muriel Matters: The Fearless Suffragist Who Fought For Equality

Reviewed by Lesley McDowell

AFTER she was arrested for chaining herself to the Ladies' Gallery in the House of Commons, Muriel Matters was described by a fellow suffragist as "a young Australian girl with masses of golden hair, the face of a dreamer and an enthusiast … She is a modern day Joan of Arc."

It’s hard not to disagree with this assessment of the actress-turned-activist who arrived in England from Australia in the early years of the 20th century and became one of the most important fighters for votes for women. Yet, despite the Joan of Arc parallels, she has been overshadowed by more high-profile women such as Millicent Fawcett and the Pankhursts, as have many suffragists and suffragettes who also fought hard. As Wainwright acknowledges, Matters’s "lost history" has therefore presented certain challenges, and not all of them have been overcome here.

Where Wainwright can be on surer ground is on the recorded facts for both Matters’s early career and her subsequent political activity, which have helpful paper trails. Born in Adelaide, the granddaughter to an English couple who emigrated in the 19th century, Muriel was one of 10 children whose father was feckless and often away from home, and an extraordinarily strong woman who more or less brought up her brood of children alone. Muriel soon stood out at school, particularly when it came to public speaking, and her feminist views were formed early on, especially when relatives gave her a copy of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. More public speaking – such as the recitations of poems – followed and by her teens she was performing in plays and had joined a professional company. She was well-known enough to have her picture used alongside cosmetic products, even though she hadn’t knowingly endorsed them.

However, Matters grew disillusioned with the living and working conditions of professional acting life in Australia, and instead set herself up as a tutor of elocution for a while. But she decided to give it another go and left for London in 1905 to pursue better career opportunities. Once there, she met George Bernard Shaw and Henry Arthur Jones, and was soon receiving rave reviews for speaking roles. But politics remained her real passion, and through the Russian activist Peter Kropotkin, she met other political figures and began attending lectures given by, among others, Emmeline Pankhurst. It wasn’t long before she began giving speeches about women’s suffrage and her experience of drama meant her talks made more than just political points; she was able to convey urgency and enthusiasm in them, too, and win over crowds easily.

Wainwright fleshes out this history with background information about the Pankhursts and other leading figures in the suffrage movement, and he describes with genuine pleasure what was probably Matters’s greatest moment, when she chained herself to the hated "Grille" in the Ladies' Gallery at the House of Commons. This was a screen through which women had to look if they wanted to see what was going on in the benches below. Thanks to her actions, it was subsequently removed, although Matters did spend a couple of months in prison as a result, most of it in solitary confinement.

How much did the experience of prison change her? It’s hard to tell. She speaks about it afterwards, describing the hellish conditions, but what impact it had on her psychologically is not clear, and this is where Wainwright’s biography falls down. Muriel’s inner life is almost a blank page, and her personal life is non-existent, save for some curious incidents like her sudden engagement to Welsh pianist Bryceson Treharne, whom she’d first met back in Adelaide. It wasn’t until seven years after she arrived in London that this engagement was announced, and there’s little evidence that she and Treharne had even been in contact during those years, never mind in a relationship. The engagement ended as abruptly as it began and then, out of the blue, less than 15 months later, Matters became engaged again, to an American doctor, William Proctor.

This engagement did lead to marriage in 1914 but the couple seem to have led entirely separate lives, Matters becoming more devoted to her political causes, like the welfare of children. In a letter written in 1959 she wrote: "I miss Bill and Len (her husband and brother). They knew I was ‘queer’ but let it be!" Wainwright can only speculate that Matters may have been a lesbian, and that her close friendship with fellow suffragist Violet Tillard, who might have been the real love of her life, was what she was referring to here. But in the absence of more private documentation, such as love letters or a diary, there is nothing to confirm anything like that kind of involvement with Tillard, or to explain the strangeness of Matters’s sudden engagements to men she doesn’t seem to have loved.

As a result, that necessary personal connection is absent here. We can admire Matters’s convictions and her lifelong fight for equality; we can cheer her actions and her brave campaigning in the face of prison and violence. But there is almost too much more to know about her, a space in the inner life that Wainwright, alas, has not been able to fill. Without that, his biography is more a helpful addition to the history of the suffrage movement than a full portrayal of a remarkable woman.