Portraying history and heroism in Rebecca West's The sentinel

Rebecca West's early interest in the suffragette movement gives us a strong sense of her development as a writer and feminist thinker, as her feminist perspective shifts from impassioned and enthusiastic supporter of the suffragettes in her incomplete novel, The Sentinel, to the more measured assessments in her early journalism. This article discusses some of the ways in which the imagery, iconography and militant discourse of suffragette writing and public speaking shaped the imagination of the young Rebecca West. It also shows how her celebration of female heroism in The Sentinel, often conveyed through detailed depictions of the women she admired, creates a vivid and informed version of feminist history.