Gertrude Bell: Pioneer, Anti-Suffragist, Feminist Icon?

This essay explores Gertrude Bell’s life and career from the broader perspective of women’s history in Britain. It presents new research that uncovers Bell’s little-known leadership of the northern branch of the Anti-Suffrage League, in the context of recent debates surrounding the various motivations women had to become involved in the fight against political equality. Any attempt to recover Bell as a feminist icon would seem misplaced, considering her own disavowal of ‘women’s causes’. And yet, this study argues that Bell refused to be constrained by the normative expectations of the day for women of her rank. Focusing on Bell’s early life, education and pre-First World War career, the chapter proposes that the tools of gender analysis provide a useful framework for analysing three aspects of Bell’s character that she herself deployed to succeed as a woman in the ‘man’s world’ of high politics and diplomacy: her imperialist politics, her class entitlement and her forceful personality.