Lady Constance Lytton And The Four Waves Of Feminism

Lady Constance Lytton was born in 1869 to a rich family. In 1908 she began to protest for women’s rights and later got arrested with many other suffragettes. She was furious to see how other women were being treated and how her title saved her. Because of this, she bought glasses, a cheap dress, cut her hair, and called herself Jane Warton. From there she joined a delegation, got arrested, and went on a hunger strike in jail. After refusing to open her mouth to food, Lady Constance was held down as a metal tube broke her teeth when being forced in. This tube was propelled all the way down to her stomach and the food was poured down without pause. This caused Lady Constance to throw up immediately. The doctor slapped and left her too weak to move, laying in her own vomit. This was done night after night. She died in 1923.

Lady Constance Lytton was a feminist. Feminism has been a huge, controversial topic since the nineteenth century. While modern feminism has a new silhouette, many characteristics have remained the same since the first wave of feminism. The women’s suffrage movement began in 1840 and many, many years later, the nineteenth amendment was ratified granting women full voting rights. The first wave of feminism was rooted throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The main focus of the women during this time was to open opportunities for themselves, specifically suffrage. Many people thought that women were superior to men ethically and if they were given more responsibility such as, the right to vote, then they could improve politics as well as ethics.

The second was centered around reproductive and sexuality rights and the main goal was to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed which guaranteed social equality among men and women. Due to the fact that the third wave was constructed from post-modern thinking, it differed from the first two in the sense that young feminists saw lipstick, high heels, and low necklines as empowerment instead of linking it with male oppression.

The fourth and most recent wave of feminism is taking over America right now. It is concerned with many of the same issues as the previous ones such as, equal pay and social gender equality. It was founded and based on sexuality and gender studies. The sex positivity movement embraces sexual expression and sexuality and promotes safe, consensual sex. Although this movement started in the third wave, it was reinforced and emphasized in the fourth. The body positive movement has blown up on the internet which allows the fourth wave to empower bodies of all shapes and sizes.

Finally, unlike the other three waves, the fourth wave of feminism is driven by the internet and social media. Like many other political issues, the internet has both hurt and benefited feminism. With that being said, social media has allowed feminism to reach so many people in ways it could not in the past. Women’s rights have been an issue since, what seems like, the dawn of time. In Adrianne Riches’ essay, Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying, written during the second wave of feminism, she states, “Women’s honor, something altogether else: virginity, chastity, fidelity to a husband. Honesty in a woman has not been considered important. We have been depicted as generically whimsical, deceitful, subtle, vacillating. And we have been rewarded for lying”. This quote displays how inconsequential women’s true thoughts and feelings were at that time. Men did not want honesty, they simply wanted women to tell them what they wanted to hear and as long as they were chaste and loyal, not much else mattered.

Arguably, this notion that women’s voices are insignificant is still alive today which can attest to the fact that feminism is also alive after all these years. All of these waves are a part of this huge silhouette known as feminism and when combined, they could be a force to be reckoned with.