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Suffragette-Teaser

I come to ask you to help to win this fight. If we win it, this hardest of all fights, then, to be sure, in the future it is going to be made easier for women all over the world to win their fight when their time comes. – Emmeline Pankhurst (1913)

“We wanted to counter the misperception that it was only the wealthy who were in this movement. We pored over unpublished letters, police records – ones about Suffragette surveillance had only just been released by the National Archive in 2003 – and academic texts.” – Sarah Gavron (2015)

**Author’s note: I sat down with Alison Owen and Faye Ward, Producers of Suffragette, for a brief interview. All quotes contained within this article are either directly from that interview or pulled from the Production Notes I was sent after having seen the film.**

I’ll be honest, I never knew much about the Suffragette movement. I knew broad strokes, nothing specific. My only real memory comes from Mary Poppins in the form of Mrs. Banks in her purple, white and yellow with a “Votes for Women” sash tied across her chest. I had this vague idea the U.K. Suffrage movement consisted mostly of upper and middle class women that politely marched through the streets singing “votes for women”. It wasn’t until I sat down and watched Suffragette that I realized there was so much more to the story than the shiny gloss I had been presented with so long ago.

Suffragette is a moving story about a working class woman, Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan), during the pivotal time in 1912 when the Suffrage movement, tired of being ignored, turned to more aggressive measures. We are first introduced to Maud as she works at East End Laundry, keeping her head down, causing no trouble and wanting no trouble. Throughout the course of the film she is slowly drawn into the world of the Suffragettes. Witnessing, first hand, the violence visited upon those who buck the status quo and the sacrifices necessary to bring about a better future.

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The narratives of the main women, Maud, Pharmacist Edith Ellyn (Helena Bonham Carter), upper-class Alice Haughton (Romola Garai), working woman Violet Miller (Anne-Marie Duff) are woven around the historical events surrounding two women. Emily Wilding Davison (Natalie Press), a Suffragette that went to prison 9 times, and Emmeline Pankhurst (Meryl Streep), the leader of the movement.

With the exception of Emily Wilding Davison and Emmeline Pankhurst, the characters are amalgams of real women and men who were present during the time, involved with and against the Suffrage movement. There are men in the movie, and there were men who supported and went to prison, all in name of the Suffrage movement.

Ward was quick to point out, “Men who were sympathizers did exist, and they were key to the organization of the cause and worked tirelessly in the background. This is why we included the character of Hugh Ellyn [played by Finbar Lynch], Edith’s husband. We were inspired by three marriages where both husbands and wives supported the Suffragette movement.” There were so many stories to tell, it couldn’t be contained within the confines of a 106 minute movie. So the creators set to work researching and cobbling together characters that would represent all walks of life and what it was actually like for those people.

For example: Helena Bonham Carter’s character was a construct of several different historical women. But there was one Welsh woman named Edith Garrud who taught jujitsu to Suffragettes so they could defend themselves against the police who were trained to use violence upon the women demonstrating. She also taught a group of women who were the bodyguards of Emmeline Pankhurst literally called, The Bodyguard. Her name, Edith Ellyn, is in honor of this woman.

Mulligan was so taken by the project and spent so much time researching she found materials previous years of research had not uncovered. She spent hours in the archives of the Museum of London, home to extensive Suffragette writings. During that research she discovered an autobiography of Hannah Mitchell, The Hard Way Up, who eventually became a leader in the Suffrage movement and of the Labour Party. As Mulligan states, “Hannah’s book became a sort of bible that I kept on-set with me.”

Director Sarah Gavron, Writer Abi Morgan and Producers Alison Owen and Faye Ward all shared a passion to tell this story. To that end they wanted to make it as authentic as possible and spent years poring over historical documents to find the core narrative of the film. They even went so far as to be the first film in history to shoot in the House of Commons at the Palace of Westminster. How did they achieve such a monumental feat? By channeling the determination of the Suffragettes and not taking “no” for an answer.

Owen states, “This was thanks to both the tenacity of our location manager, Harriet Lawrence, and the remarkable timing of the House resolving to open its doors to location filming – which was good news for all film crews moving forward, not only ours.”

Sarah Gavron, and others, were quoted in the production notes, “There we were, in Parliament as the first-ever film crew at work, staging an enormous riot in the central courtyard with hundreds of supporting artists and with horses and stunts. It felt truly extraordinary to be there recreating a moment in history at the very place where it had happened.”

Mulligan reflects, “Walking through those halls to re-create that history was quite a powerful feeling. We filmed those scenes after we had done the laundry sequences, so we had the reference of being working-class women now allowed into this grand building.

“What affected us the most was when one of the women who works there took Anne-Marie, Romola, Natalie, and myself into a back room. There, framed on a wall, was the scarf reading ‘Votes for Women’ that Emily Wilding Davison had at the Derby. That hit us hard.”

However, Helena Bonham Carter has a unique familial tie to the material: her great-grandfather was Lord Herbert Asquith, Prime Minister at the time of the events depicted in Suffragette and a “prime nemesis of the movement”. Producer Faye Ward, “We did discuss family history with Helena from the first. She told me about her grandmother Violet, Lord Asquith’s daughter, who was vocal in disliking the Suffragettes.”

In the production notes Bonham Carter further elaborates , “Violet allowed me to see another perspective. It seemed that it was because she was already a powerful independent woman she didn’t experience the constraints felt by others, and possibly didn’t understand the Suffragettes’ fight. My grandmother was an indomitable woman so I wondered, why wasn’t she telling her father to listen and how could she have been anti-suffrage? My mum’s explanation is that Violet was treated like a man, so she never experienced any personal discrimination.” “Asquith was surrounded by strong women; all of his main relationships and confidantes were women. I think they were against the violence in the Suffragettes’ protests. I tried to understand my great-grandfather’s point of view, but women were not being heard and the level of their frustration was indicated by blowing up things. I met with Emmeline’s great-granddaughter, Helen Pankhurst, and I said, ‘I’m really sorry.’”

You can feel the passion and the years of research as you watch the movie. Everything from finding the original company that made the Suffragette medals, to the color scheme, to wardrobe and hairstyles were carefully thought out. However, they were also very careful to try to bring it forward and make it relevant for today. They did not want to make just another period piece. They wanted it to resonate with people in all walks of life in many countries. Suffragette is a snapshot in history. It’s not the entire story, how could it be when we are still fighting for equal rights to this day? No, it’s a piece of history. A part where women of all social classes moved forward for the common goal to make tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrow better for all women. A time when these women turned to something akin to guerrilla tactics after decades of peaceful protests had gone unheeded. Violence against property, not people, they always made sure they harmed no living soul. Despite they themselves having violence visited upon them.

It’s a powerful movie. As I sat in the screening, vowing to take notes, my notebook and pen were quickly forgotten as I was swept away in the history. When I sat down and had a quick interview with Owen and Ward, I was more than a little nervous. We ended up talking less about the movie and more about where we are today in regards to women’s rights. How far we have come and how much father we have to go.

This is the first movie dealing with the suffrage movement and it has taken over 100 years to tell. That is a staggering amount of time for something that is so important to 50% of the population. Why has it taken so long to tell this story? Frankly, it wasn’t possible before now. Maybe that’s because the documents relating to the Suffragette surveillance were only made public in 2003. More likely, Hollywood wasn’t ready to hear it.

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It’s no secret it’s a struggle to get female lead movies made. The studios are constantly saying there is no market for it, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Even in non-female lead movies, any roles for women tend to be stereotypical with no real depth. Or, the most likely scenario, they are merely set pieces for the men in the movie. Plot devices, window dressing, props. I won’t even get into the aging factor for actresses. That is an entire other diatribe. It’s a struggle behind the scenes as well. Being a woman producer, a woman anything, in Hollywood is notoriously difficult. Sexism runs rampant; pay inequality isn’t just reserved for people in front of the camera. When talking to Ward and Owen about their own experiences, they pulled no punches, being completely blunt about the subject. Both have been subjected to sexism, being told they wouldn’t amount to anything because they were women, or unless they slept their way to the top. Being propositioned or belittled and dismissed, all because of their gender.

There are so many women, from the top down, working on this film it makes it a bit of a rarity. As Bonham Carter stated she and other actresses have “all done these parts where basically we’re the love interest and that’s it,” and Suffragette is “A movie with so many big parts for women, directed by a woman, written by a woman, and produced by women.”

Streep, too, remarks, “I think Suffragette is the first major motion picture about the subject of the civil rights of women, about a time in which women resorted to violence in order to claim their full quotient of rights as human beings. It is only very recently that we have been deemed as such in the eyes of the governing gender.”

Perhaps one of the most powerful moments of the film comes after the final frame, right before the credits start to roll. It lists the year, in chronological order, which countries gave women the right to vote, all the way to 2015 where Saudi Arabia is pending.

Suffragette is a movie directed by a women, written by a women, produced by women, about women, telling a story that must be told and has been long in the making. But, they are careful to point out, it should resonate with everyone. It’s not just a period piece, as star Carey Mulligan says, “Suffragette is a universal story for today and about equality; the Suffragettes’ battle for change is still being fought, not only for women’s rights but for equality between races, between societies, between classes. Hopefully our film will inspire people to go out and do something to make the world a better place.”

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Stephanie Cookies

Stephanie is a silly, sarcastic, and serious soul wrapped in a 6 foot shell who loves good people, good conversation, good food, and good booze. She was raised on Star Wars, tempered by comic books, and challenged by video games, still learning and exploring all things nerdom has to offer. Follow her on Twitter @WanderCookies

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