Harraden suffered lifelong illness which included a severe case of diphtheria and damage to her ulnar nerve as a result of playing the violoncello.

[3] Harraden spent several summer holidays lodging at The Green Dragon inn at Little Stretton, Shropshire, walking and writing.

[1] In 1894, Harraden travelled to the United States to visit British friends John and Agnes Kendall in San Diego, California.

She recovered her health on a lemon ranch in the El Cajon Valley and in the seaside resort of La Jolla, returning to San Diego several times during the late 1890s.

This included Holiday Campaigns in the Lake District for Liverpool WSPU organiser Alice Davies, which she took part in with the Australian suffragette Vida Goldstein.

Many of her works—if not directly referencing the suffragette cause—include themes of gender dynamics, male/female power struggles, and address "the alienation of the individual in the modern world".

[3] Harraden’s female characters are strong, independent, and highly intelligent and yet remain maternal and sympathetic; her heroines are not afraid to express emotions that may have been considered "womanly" or weak at this time.

The protagonist Hilda, is characterized as harsh and bitter by the men around her just because of her desire for independence ---an unexpected and formidable trait in a woman in this era.

In the play, Lady Geraldine, has agreed to make a speech at an anti-suffrage meeting, but quickly realizes she has little information about the issue and needs a ghostwriter to help develop her argument.

[9] Harraden humorously summarizes the flawed arguments of the anti-suffragist with Romney finishing Geraldine’s speech by telling her to stress the "degradation of Womanhood.

[9] As the character, Professor Miller, in Lady Geraldine's Speech, lists Portia, Hermione, Cordelia, Rosalind, Beatrice, and Imogen all as "women of brain, education, and initiative" that the suffragettes model themselves after.

However, suffrage playwrights had to have an acute awareness that "public speaking platforms defied nineteenth-century notions of women's decorum, modesty, and submissiveness and marked them as aggressive and unfeminine".