Этель Мэри Смит: Англиялық композитор және сайлау құқығы үшін күрескен әйел

English composer and suffragette (1858–1944)

Dame Ethel Mary Smyth (/s//m//aɪ//θ/; 22 April 18588 May 1944) was an English composer and a member of the women's suffrage movement. Her compositions include songs, works for piano, chamber music, orchestral works, choral works and operas. Smyth tended to be marginalised as a "woman composer" as though her work could not be accepted as mainstream. Her father, John Hall Smyth, who was a major general in the Royal Artillery, was very much opposed to her making a career in music. She lived at Frimhurst, near Frimley Green for many years, before moving to Hook Heath on the outskirts of Woking. Her youngest brother was Robert ("Bob") Napier Smyth (1868–1947), who rose to become a Brigadier in the British Army. She was the aunt of Lieutenant General Sir Ralph Eastwood.

In 1910, Smyth joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), which agitated for women's suffrage, giving up music for two years to devote herself to the cause. Smyth argued in her memoirs that the disadvantages that women face in music stems from the lack of a political vote or voice. She developed a very close relationship with the charismatic leader of the WSPU, Emmeline Pankhurst, and accompanied her on many occasions. This eventually became the anthem of the WSPU and the suffragette movement. Smyth is credited with teaching Emmeline Pankhurst how to throw stones in 1912. After further practice aiming stones at trees near the home of fellow suffragette Zelie Emerson, Pankhurst called on WPSU members to break a window of the house of any politician who opposed votes for women. Smyth was one of the 109 members who responded to Pankhurst's call, asking to be sent to attack the home of Colonial Secretary Lewis Harcourt, who had remarked that if his wife's beauty and wisdom was present in all women, they would have already won the vote. Smyth stood half the bail for Helen Craggs, who had been caught on the way to carry out the arson of the leading politician's home. When Thomas Beecham, her proponent friend, went to visit her there, he found suffragettes marching in the quadrangle and singing, as Smyth leaned out of a window conducting the song with a toothbrush. In her book, Female Pipings in Eden, Smyth said her prison experience was of being "in good company" of united women "old, young, rich, poor, strong, delicate", putting the cause they were imprisoned for before their personal needs. Smyth revealed that the prison was infested with cockroaches, even in the hospital ward. She was released early, due to a medical assessment that she was mentally unstable and hysterical. Smyth gave written evidence in the November trial of Pankhurst and others for inciting violence, stating that she (Smyth) had freely engaged in activism. She continued to correspond with Pankhurst, and heard of her getting lost trying to find the safe house provided for her to avoid re arrest in Scotland. – who, both alarmed and amused, said it was "like being caught by a giant crab", but the two became friends. She met Willie Wilde, the brother of Oscar Wilde, during a trip to Ireland. They became engaged on the return railway journey from Holyhead to Euston, but she broke it off within three weeks. In recognition of her work as a composer and writer, Smyth was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1922, becoming the first female composer to be awarded a damehood. Smyth received honorary doctorates in music from the universities of Durham and Oxford. She died in Woking in 1944 at the age of 86. Smyth was actively involved in sport throughout her life. In her youth, she was a keen horse rider and tennis player. She was a passionate golfer and a member of the ladies' section of Woking Golf Club, near where she lived. After she died and was cremated, her ashes were, as she had requested, scattered in the woods neighbouring the club Her musical executor was the composer and musicologist Kathleen Dale, a close neighbour.

Ethel Smyth featured, under the name of Edith Staines, in E. F. Benson's Dodo books (1893–1921), decades before the quaint musical characters of his more famous Mapp and Lucia series. She "gleefully acknowledged" the portrait, according to Prunella Scales. She was later a model for the fictional Dame Hilda Tablet in the 1950s radio plays of Henry Reed. She was portrayed by Maureen Pryor in the 1974 BBC television film Shoulder to Shoulder. Judy Chicago's monumental work of feminist art, The Dinner Party, features a place setting for Smyth. Since 2018, the actress and singer, Lucy Stevens, has portrayed Ethel Smyth on stage at various venues in Britain. In 2021, Smyth posthumously received a Grammy for Best Classical Vocal Solo based on the recording of The Prison by conductor James Blachly and soloists Sarah Brailey and Dashon Burton, members of Experiential Orchestra. Their rendition was released in August 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote in the United States. In March 2022, in recognition of International Women's Day, a larger than size statue by Christine Charlesworth of Smyth conducting was unveiled in Duke's Court Plaza, Woking, by the Mayor of Woking, Cllr Liam Lyons, with invited guests who included members of Smyth's family as well as academics and councillors. Charlesworth described her sculpture as:
Ethel stands, wearing her usual tweed skirt, enthusiastically conducting passers by with her over sized baton, as presented to her at the Royal Albert Hall by Emeline Pankhurst. Her jacket is half open, her arms are beating out the time and her eyes are full of concentration as she battles with her hearing loss, which went completely in her 50's. Also detailed in her pocket is a sheaf of paper which could be ideas for a new opera, or maybe notes for a new book, as well as sketches and polemical essays.