This article considers how national newspapers reported, portrayed, and narrated the militant suffragism of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). Using three popular newspapers, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, and the Daily Mirror and the specific case study of hunger strikes and the government’s response of forcible feeding, it evaluates the various tropes that characterized press coverage of the suffragettes. It investigates how militancy, an approach that prioritized spectacle, was covered in an emerging medium that sought to recast politics in a new and spectacular fashion, thereby extending understanding of how the style and content of popular newspapers evolved in the first decade of the twentieth century. In doing so, it expands existing research into the dynamics of the nascent popular press and its function as an ‘arena’ for fostering extra-parliamentary political debate. The WSPU attempted to take advantage of this opportunity to promote its own arguments on forcible feeding and female suffrage, using correspondence columns and prisoner testimony to elicit empathy, albeit with only sporadic success in receiving a sympathetic hearing from a hostile press, with enmity a consistent feature of editorial argument. Nevertheless, the article concludes that responses to hunger strikes and forcible feeding in the popular press were multifaceted, and whilst the WSPU was unable to reframe patriarchal narratives of political activism, it persisted with words as well as deeds in seeking to co-opt newspapers into its campaign and garner publicity for its cause.

中文翻译：

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言行：英国爱德华七世时期的大众媒体和萨夫拉格特饥饿抗议

本文考虑了国家报纸如何报道，描绘和叙述妇女社会和政治联盟（WSPU）的激进选举权。使用三种流行的报纸，《每日邮报》，《每日快报》和《每日镜报》以及针对绝食和政府对强迫进食的反应的具体案例研究，它评估了代表记者的新闻报道的各种特质。它研究了在一种新兴媒体中如何报道好战这一优先考虑的问题，这种新兴媒体试图以一种崭新而壮观的方式重铸政治，从而扩展了人们对二十世纪前十年流行报纸的风格和内容演变的理解。通过这样做，它将现有的研究扩展到新生的大众媒体的动态及其作为促进议会外政治辩论的“竞技场”的功能。WSPU试图利用这一机会来宣传自己关于强制喂养和女性选举权的论点，使用通讯栏和囚犯证词来引起同理心，尽管仅在接收敌对新闻界的同情听证中取得了零星的成功，而仇恨则是编辑论点的一贯特点。尽管如此，该文章的结论是，大众媒体对绝食和强迫喂养的反应是多方面的，尽管WSPU无法重新构造家长式的政治活动主义叙述，但它在言辞和事迹上都坚持不懈地寻求将报纸纳入其中。它的运动并为其事业赢得宣传。