In Search of Suffragettes

When I heard that a film about the women’s suffrage movement was in the works, I was thrilled. As a big fan of women’s history, I can attest that rarely (if ever) do the stories of the bravery, endurance, and (wholly justified) civil disobedience of historical women make it out of the pages of scholarly books. I carry them around with me, a private realm unreflected in popular media and cultural logics, in which women have lobbied, marched, rallied, published, and organized – as well as loved, achieved, served, provided, and proved themselves, over and over and over again, worthy of our respect and veneration.

After long months of waiting, the film’s release in the US arrived. Directed by Sarah Gavron, Suffragettechronicles the story of a group of Suffragettes in England made notorious by their angry and militant tactics: smashing windows, tussling with police, and hunger strikes, to name a few. Starring Carey Mulligan, Anne-Marie Duff, Helena Bonham Carter, and featuring many others, the film promised to tell the story of women who helped effect great change in their society, change that provided immediate benefits for some and eventually, for their nation as a whole.

Filled with anticipation, I searched local theaters for show times. And couldn’t find anything within 50 miles of where I live, despite dozens of theaters in that radius. Puzzled, I searched again, to at last discover one theater – ONE – in my state actively showing this new release film. That’s strange, I thought: must be some kind of mistake. More searching provided no further information, however; checking back days, even weeks later, produced the same result. Eventually, I came to understand that none of the theaters in my area were planning to show the film at all. If I wanted to see it, I’d have to trek over an hour across town. Not the greatest hardship, perhaps, but over two hours of travel time, for me, created insurmountable difficulties.

In the end, it proved too daunting a distance and the theater ended its run of the film before I could arrange to see it.

I did, however, obtain a copy of the film the moment it was released on DVD. I watched it immediately. And found a beautifully crafted, tragic and inspiring interpretation of the suffragette experience that brought a group of brave and determined women to life. As the protagonist, Maud Watts, endured hard labor, the full burden of her familial responsibilities, sexual harassment, and her husband’s betrayal, not to mention incarceration, physical assault by police, and other violations of her rights and person, I felt a deep sense of appreciation and pride settle over me, sentiments of gratitude for the women who fought so hard to make the privileges I enjoy today possible.

Vietnam Women's Memorial, National Mall, Washington, D.C.

And there it is. That feeling, right there, is what I find to be missing from current attitudes about women in the United States. This veneration for the contributions and accomplishments of women exists, but in far too short supply: in our history narratives, textbooks, historical fiction and film – even in our Wikipedia entries and other commonplace digital and analogue information sources, women are prized for their most feminine attributes. 

Michelle Obama, FLOTUS

Who she married, how successful a mother or homemaker she was, too often takes precedence over all else she may have done or achieved in her life. This pervasive doubting of women appears in the questions we ask our politicians, our actors and other celebrities, our business leaders, ourselves. It leads us to downplay, de-value and dismiss the attributes of successful women that are perceived to be less “feminine” – resourcefulness, courage, business acumen, diplomacy, leadership.

Perhaps losing out on a theater-based screening of a film that does tell this story, in this way, about women’s rights activists, seems inconsequential. But from another angle, perhaps the active suppression and dismissal of this film is symptomatic of the way that stories honoring women who fought for their rights are valued in our society in general.

Martha Washington, FLOTUS, and family

Revolutionary heroes in their own right, outspoken women remain labeled as troublemakers, rabble-rousers, and radicals, standing in opposition to everything that makes this country “great.” This blatant double standard, in which men are honored, even worshipped, for rebellion in the name of democracy and women are disdained, undergirds the thinking that informs every facet of contemporary life. This is why, until a widespread paradigm shift is accomplished – until films and books and stories about brave and rebellious women are a treasured part of our everyday social, political and cultural commonplaces – it will be necessary to keep up the “minor” complaints about film availability, about the way women are represented in film, in media, in national historical narratives, historic sites and museums, about the toxic gendering of everything around us, from personal hygiene products to toys, and every other place the present paradigm becomes glaringly visible.