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Suffragette is a fierce film

“All my life I’ve been respectful, done what men told me … but I can’t have that any more.” 

Dec 23, 2015, updated Dec 23, 2015

With those words, laundress Maud Watts surely has every woman on her side.

Maud is the central figure in the dramatic and often brutal new film Suffragette, by talented writer-director team Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady) and Sarah Gavron (Brick Lane).

Her character is fictional, but she represents the voice of many working women turned suffragettes in early 20th-centry England – the so-called “foot soldiers” in the fight for votes for women which was led by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and became increasingly militant in the face of political scorn and inertia.

In Suffragette, WSPU founder Emmeline Pankhurst is played by Meryl Streep, although she has little screen time. Pankhurst is presented as a defiant yet shadowy figure who has been forced into hiding, but still directs her followers in actions of civil disobedience such as window smashing, hunger strikes and the blowing up of post boxes.

It is during one such action that Maud (Carey Mulligan) – the married mother of a small boy and worker in a sweatshop-style laundry – is accidentally knocked to the ground. Maud has always been a compliant worker and dutiful wife, but the incident triggers a kind of awakening. It leads to her sacrificing everything to join the fight for women’s rights.

Mulligan (The Great Gatsby, Inside Llewyn Davis) is thoroughly persuasive as the working-class heroine, giving a formidable performance that demands empathy. The strong cast also includes Helena Bonham Carter as pharmacist and bomb-maker Edith Ellyn (a fictional character, but apparently inspired partly by two different women), and Natalie Press as real-life suffragette Emily Wilding Davison.

Suffragette is a fierce, fervent film.

It is captivating and also confronting, as the authorities use increasingly violent means to try to suppress the suffrage campaign and break the spirit of its proponents. The climax – even for those familiar with the real-life events portrayed – is shocking.

Audiences might wish for an ending that sees women lining up at the ballot box, but the reality is less heartening. The suffrage campaign was put on hold after the outbreak of World War I, with full female enfranchisement not realised until 1928* – 16 years after Suffragette is set.

Some have suggested that the militancy of the WSPU members delayed the introduction of women’s suffrage in England, but after some 40 years of campaigning, they could hardly be blamed for losing patience. Being compliant and peaceful had got them diddly-squat – not only did they not have the right to vote, they also had no working rights, no control over their own money and no parental rights.

Suffragette highlights an important history. It stirs the blood and spirit. It reminds us of what has been achieved and what has yet to be achieved.

As Streep’s Pankhurst says in one of her speeches: “Never underestimate the power us women have to define our own destinies.”

*In 1918 the, law in Britain was changed to allow women over 30 to vote, but it was not until 1928 that all women over 21 were given the vote. By 1912, when Suffragette is set, women in Australia had already had the vote for 10 years – and even longer in South Australia.

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