The Home-Breakers

Pseudonymously authored by ‘A Looker-on’, The Home-Breakers was published in 1913, at the height of militancy and in the intense atmosphere of hunger-striking, forcible feeding and the ‘Cat and Mouse Act’. By addressing these events, including the death of Emily Wilding Davison after the Derby in June 1913, the novel represents an immediate intervention into the politics of the moment. Its position in relation to the suffrage cause is, however, rather more ambiguous than its title suggests. While the novel locates itself with a concern over the condition of England at the present time, and warns against the dangerous effects of militancy, it also presents a powerful analysis of the militant mind which, through the depth of its interiority, almost inevitably draws the reader into a certain sympathy with women who devote themselves to the cause.