by Abi Morgan
Ruby Films
It boggles my mind that it’s been less than 100 years since we’ve had women’s suffrage in the US and the UK. Less than 100 years, and even after that, women were still expected to vote as their husbands decided (My grandmother once voted for Goldwater because, “Well, that’s who my dad would have voted for… I don’t LIKE him, but….” My mother is still just agog at this, and that election was over 50 years ago, and my grandmother has been dead for nearly 20.) This is a very small part of the story of where the Vote For Women movement was in 1912 in Great Britain. It isn’t a comprehensive history, and isn’t meant to be- the opening credits describe this as the story of some working class women in the movement.
It’s 1912 in London, and in the East End, Maud Watts works in a laundry, and never gave a thought to women’s rights. She has a husband and a kid, and getting through the day at 13 shillings a week is as far as she’s thinking. She meets with some suffragettes, and progressively gets more and more involved with the Votes for Women movement, enduring incarceration, and all the while being spied on by men from “the government” (it’s not clear what part of the government is keeping tabs on the suffragettes) and trying to get the press to take notice of the issue.
The performances are all fantastic, as one would expect from Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham-Carter, and Romala Garai (and La Streep, but she’s in the movie for about five minutes, marketing notwithstanding). Brenden Gleeson (aka Mad-Eye Mooney) is the lead government agent (You can’t call them G-men in British, can you?) is appropriately threatening and certain in his rightness (he’s wrong).
One of the most arresting moments is when Maud snarls at Brenden Gleeson that they use militant tactics because, “War is the language men understand.” I have been in arguments with my dad where he just can’t understand why people protest and stop traffic and occupy the Mall of America and disobey curfews (fucking curfews, seriously?). Why don’t you just ask politely for what you want?
Yeah, see, we’ve always tried that.
“Hey, George III, could you like, not tax the tea a whole bunch while not giving us representation in Parliament? No? Okay, we’ll just sit quietly and ask again later.”
“Yeah, so Civil Rights would be nice, can we make sure that black people can vote like the Constitution says we can? Maybe have some equality in education and…no? Sorry to bother you.”
“Women are 50% of the population, we’d like to have some say in what the- oh, we’re too emotional to be trusted with votes? Why is it when men lose their shit and kill a woman for not fucking him, they aren’t too emotional to be trusted with anything? I’m just asking.”
Yeah, I’m a bit salty.
Anyway, the progression is this: ask nicely, and when the powers that be say no, because they don’t want to give up their power, then you take to the streets and make it clear exactly what the problem is and how you would like it resolved. Ideally, this progression doesn’t involve dropping bombs in mailboxes or, well, blowing up David Lloyd-George’s (empty, unfinished) house. I think destruction of property is too far, but protests in the streets, demonstrations, hell, Occupy Wall Street had some good points.
It’s too easy to ignore demands if there isn’t attention being paid. And when you control the message the press is allowed to give… it’s no wonder that things escalated. Twitter and other social media platforms have been a godsend for organization- look at the Arab Spring or at Ferguson.
The thing I kept finding myself wondering during the whole last half of the movie is, “What’s your end condition?” They obviously weren’t going to end with universal suffrage- that’s 1928. Or even with limited votes for property-owning women over 30 in the UK- that’s 1918, and the time frame was clearly much narrower. But you need to end on some form of victory for the suffragettes, and it wasn’t totally clear that the establishment was keeping the press from reporting on the activities of Pankhurst and her followers, so it ends…
The pacing isn’t great: it’s slow and kind of frustrating as you’re just waiting for Maud to figure out why this is important, and the final kicker comes when she asks her husband, “If we had a daughter, what would her life be like?” “Same as yours.”
It also feels like director Sarah Gavron threw in all the greatest hits of this period- police brutality, hunger strikes, force-feeding, the bombing of Mr. Lloyd-George’s home, Emily Davison‘s death at Epson Derby… I get it, I do, but it didn’t totally work for me.
There has been criticisms of the movie being super white – which it was – and it doesn’t address the contributions of women of color in the British Suffragette movement, and this article is a really good discussion by historians on the role of race in the historical movement.
Unlike Stonewall, this movie isn’t pretending to be a comprehensive study of the entire movement. It distills that movement down to a group of working class women within the movement. For that, and the larger discussion of protest and social change, it’s valuable, though flawed.
You can find tickets (US) at Fandango and Moviefone.
1893 for NZ women. Not sure what took everybody else so long. 😛
I didn’t know about this movie until the other night when (while watching Jurassic World, of all things) our BluRay player downloaded the trailer. It made me cry, and I was raging that I hadn’t even heard about this movie and it was already out. WTF, mate? Thanks for your review! I can’t wait to see it!
Universal female suffrage was 1902 in Australia. Bear in mind Australia only federated in 1901. Sad that we who led the world (behind NZ) in womens suffrage now lag so badly behind in our treatment of refugees and gay marriage. Makes me wonder what happened to us as a nation in 100 years
Universal suffrage aus is hard to pick. I know South Australia was the second only to NZ. But other colonies/states took longer.
I saw the movie two weeks ago and I thought it was good with very strong performances. I felt that the focus on the struggles of working class women was very interesting but I was surprised that there was no mention of the work that Sylvia Pankhurst was doing in the East End of London, linking the struggle for the vote with the wider labour movement.
I would have thought that working class women would have more closely identified with Sylvia’s group rather than the WSU.
As for the lack of women of colour in the film. This is British history not American, the black population was small and did not grow significantly until the 1940’s. There were two Indian women who prominent in the WSU but they were aristocrats and the focus of the film is on the struggles of working class women.
@Ellen 1902 was Australia wide and 4 women stood for parliament. SA had (restricted) voting for land owning women as of the 1850s.
There’s a great BBC mini series that I remember watching in the 70’s as a child called SHOULDER TO SHOULDER which covered the same ground as Sufferage, but with greater depth.It falls into the same category as I Claudius (very obviously studio bound, with slightly dodgy sets ….Which you forget about within 5 minutes because the acting and the scripts are brilliant) It’s well worth checking out,& I think will be available to buy on the BBC’s new classic programme platform
The U.S. state (then territory) of Wyoming granted women the vote in 1869, 51 years before the nation, for reasons still debated: https://theautry.org/explore/exhibits/suffrage/suffrage_wy.html
@Cate: I loved that miniseries. I don’t know how it would hold up today, but it had a profound effect on me, as did the women’s studies courses I took in college. I wish more women could be exposed to things like this, especially the younger ones who denounce feminism.
On another note, my mother once got into a conversation with some younger women while she was in line to vote. Just to yank their chains, she played dumb and told them she didn’t pay any attention to politics, but just voted however her husband told her to. They almost had apoplectic fits on the spot. My mother laughed about it for weeks, probably as long as those poor women were outraged on her behalf.
@Althea Claire Duffy: I’m too lazy to look it up, but I think other Western states/territories had (Colorado, Utah?) had women’s suffrage shortly after that, as well.
Just to make the history that much more complicated, women actually LOST the right to vote in many of the original thirteen United States between 1777 and 1807. Most of the original constitutional charters granted suffrage to “all free inhabitants” or similar, and in the years following independence there was a spirit of reaction (from what had in some ways truly been a revolution), and clauses were gradually inserted restricting the right to vote to white men, or in some cases to all white men and to African American men with property qualifications (as in New York). Women in Utah were enfranchised in 1869, but lost the right to vote again in 1887, only getting it back in 1895.
This is keeping in mind that women of color were effectively disenfranchised in the US South until the late 1960s, regardless of constitutional amendment, and that in fact in the US the women’s suffrage movement was frankly racist in its appeal to double the number of WASP voters to keep down the immigrants and freed slaves who might otherwise gain a share in the government. (A cynic might point out that the Western territories that granted the vote to women earliest also were most worried about having a WHITE population quorum, and were busily disenfranchising the people whose lands they were taking.) Even in England the initial “victory” was for upper class women even though the mass of the movement was working class.
Not saying this to hate on the movie, which sounds quite good. Just because I think it’s important to remember that progress is never linear, and it’s good to be aware how easy it is to lose rights that look like they have been won. That’s why you should never get bored fighting the same battles over and over. (Discouraged and tired and ready to cry, perhaps, but not bored.)
I have quoted you on my tumblr cuz the line about women being ‘too emotional’ was brilliant.
Regardless of how the U.K. was fundamentally not as racially diverse as other countries at this time, it’s important to take the criticisms seriously because all white western imperialist societies have contributed to racist ideologies that include promoting racial hierarchies. Living in the U.K. for these few months, I’ve had an interesting time seeing how the racism in the U.K. is just as existent but different from the U.S. (and a lot of it is ingrained enough that it definitely has been around for centuries).
I’m more likely to see the film now since it feels less abrasively racist or otherwise than Stonewall. I would argue that any film telling one person’s story should also aim to tell the stories of the people that helped and influenced them as best as possible. Selma was successful for that reason – it was a film about MLK that was also about the other groups of people in the movement, and it managed to feel comprehensive and deep to many because it was aware of how that lens is a powerful one.
Ultimately, it sounds like a film that sheds light on something good if, for the most part, still contributing to media that is accessible. We can enjoy it and enjoy the contributions these women made to society while still being critical about the history filmmaking chooses to show us. In tandem, those things are powerful (and probably what at least a few of these suffragettes would agree to).
I’m so sorry to nitpick, but I can’t help myself. It’s Romola Garai and Brendan Gleeson, not Romala Garai and Brenden Gleeson.
And I recommend the excellent BBC series “Lilies”, which, although set just after WWI, also offers some insight into the lives and struggles of women in the early 20th century.
Co-sign what John said. Erasure is tough because it become self-reinforcing. Let’s remember that Liverpool has had a Black community since the early 18th century. Other communities in England are newer, but the “England was white until recently” meme is subject to abuse.
1953 in Mexico.
We had had some state and municipal rights to vote on and off over the years but were allowed to vote in 53. Granted, we were still having civil wars well into the 1920’s so I guess you have to take that in to account.