The Best of Daughters

Amazon

4.5(4,753)

Daisy Lennox grows up in a family whose comfortable position is collapsing and becomes involved in the campaign for women’s suffrage. Her political commitment brings her into conflict with expectations about marriage, obedience and the proper conduct of a young woman.

After financial ruin sends the family to the countryside, Daisy enters an engagement that appears to offer stability. The outbreak of the First World War transforms those plans and forces her to reconsider duty, independence and the sacrifices demanded of women both at home and in public life.

Daisy’s suffrage politics are transformed by the war because mobilisation creates new forms of female work while postponing many pre-war political campaigns. Service and sacrifice strengthen the argument that women should possess full civic rights, yet private expectations about marriage and class remain powerful. Her story links political emancipation with the slower, less dramatic struggle to control the direction of an individual life.