Well done, Sister Suffragette! by Mary Hoffman

I suppose my three daughters first learned of the Women's Suffrage Movement through the rather jolly medium of Glynis Johns singing Sister Suffragette! in Mary Poppins. There was Mrs Banks, cheerfully neglecting her children and marching for Votes for Women! because she was rich enough to afford a nanny, wearing a sash and telling us "our daughters' daughters will adore us." It was all good clean middle class fun.

Scroll forwards ten years to 1974 to the BBC TV series "Shoulder to Shoulder" (available on YouTube) and you saw the brutal reality of the Cat and Mouse Act and the force-feeding of imprisoned suffragettes on hunger strike.

It was unwatchably horrible, just as is the one force-feeding scene in Sarah Gavron's new film, Suffragette. In reality it happened to many women and many times, causing major health problems in many, such as pneumonia when the feeding tube went into the trachea instead of the oesophagus. Gavron has said that she was influenced by "Shoulder to Shoulder" in making her film.

I knew it was coming and braced myself. The trolley being wheeled along the prison corridor, with its gruesome load of rubber tubing and enamel jug and the gang of people needed to hold each woman down makes the viewer feel sick before the scene starts.

The film takes a fresh perspective in concentrating on two (fictional) working class women who are drawn into the fight not just for votes but equal pay and conditions - a battle still being fought a hundred years later.

Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) and Violet Miller (Anne-Marie Duff) both work in a laundry in sweatshop conditions, made worse by the assaults of the lecherous boss, but have very different domestic situations. Maud is married with one child, George, who has a weak chest; Violet is with a violent husband who impregnates her almost as frequently as he beats her up.

It is Violet who draws Maud into what is now called direct action but then "civil disobedience," a development which lands her in prison and in trouble with her husband Sonny (Ben Whishaw) - and he is one of the more sympathetic men, at least at the beginning.

They are led locally by Edith Ellyn (Helena Bonham-Carter), who wanted to be a doctor but ended up  married to a pharmacist. She teaches the women "ju-jitsu" and is modelled on Edith Garrud, a real-life suffragette.

Punch cartoon 1910 "The Suffragette who knew Ju-Jitsu."

Maud's increasing frustration with her work (and the attentions of her boss to her and to Violet's young daughter) and her home lead her further and further into taking action to improve life for women then and in the future. It's an impressive, nuanced performance by Carey Mulligan and one that should win her an Oscar nomination.

But there is a historical mistake in the story of her family - one you find in countless novels too. Sonny, having thrown Maud out of the home, can't cope with working and looking after their son. It leads to a tragic scene, when Maud tries to visit on George's birthday and finds him being taken away by a couple to be adopted. The trouble is that the Adoption law was passed only in 1926 and this is 1912 or 1913 at the latest. At most he could have been fostered and that doesn't have the finality implied in this parting scene.

Emmeline Pankhurst Public Domain

Much has been made of Meryl Streep's "starring" in the film; in fact she has only one scene. She turns in one of her impressive impersonations as Emmeline Pankhurst, first addressing a crowd of women (including Maud) and then fleeing arrest. She was of course often arrested, under the Cat and Mouse Act of 1913, which allowed for the release of women prisoners after their health failed from hunger strikes, only for them to be re-arrested once they had recovered.

Emmeline Pankhurst being arrested May 1914 (Public Domain)

You can't blame the film-makers for bigging up Streep's role; this all-women production needed a big name and must have been thrilled to get her but don't go expecting a great deal.

If the film has a weakness, it is in the portrayal of men. They are jeering, sneering lechers or patronising politicians or they are out to trap and neutralise the women. The only truly sympathetic male in the end is Edith's husband and even he locks her in a cupboard to stop her attending another demonstration. True, it is because of his concern for her failing health, but still ...

There's a rumour that many male actors turned down the opportunity to play parts in the film, written by Abi Morgan, because the roles weren't "meaty" enough. There is certainly no sign of a Keir Hardy or a Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, the latter co-editor of the Votes for Women magazine and himself imprisoned and force-fed when he went on hunger strike.

This is a film about women's struggle and it is put first and foremost, quite rightly. Still, it's a shame that the men were so stereotyped.

Maud finds herself mixing with women of all classes and background and it takes a while to realise that the "Emily" she encounters is in fact Emily Wilding Davison, the suffragette who through herself in front of the king's horse at the 1913 Derby.

That sequence is magnificently re-created with complete conviction in the direction, costuming and cinematography. If you want to read the story of that day,  I recommend Celia Rees's "Return to Victoria" in the History Girls' first publication,  Daughters of Time.

Memorial edition copyright Lordprice collection

Emily's death, clearly unexpected by the other suffragettes, and her funeral lead to Maud's rescuing Violet's daughter from the clutches of the laundry boss and getting her a job in private service. It's still drudgery and it's not a given that all female servants were free from sexual assault by men, but in the context of the film it is a small victory.

Before the credits roll, we get a list of dates when women got the vote in various countries: in Britain it was 1918, but only for women over thirty (which Maud would have just been) but they had to be householders, so only 40% of women were eligible. Universal suffrage for over 21s came only in 1928. Yes, that's less than a hundred years ago.

It comes as a shock if you didn't know it. The same shock as I felt when reading in Jane Robinson's excellent 2009 book Bluestockings that the university I went to did not award degrees to women until 1948.

It it a serious and important film, not without flaws but reminding audiences of what it took to gain a right that many people now can't be bothered to exercise. It's certainly a rallying cry against that kind of apathy.




And if you want to encourage and inform your daughters with something a bit less frivolous than Mary Poppins, there is a splendid book by one of our own History Girls, Carol Drinkwater, in the My Story series of YA books published by Scholastic. Called simply Suffragette and re-issued this year, it tells the story of another working-class girl, Dollie, who also becomes involved with the movement. It too ends with Derby Day 1913, a date we should never forget.

1940's Knickers and Ruby Slippers - Celia Rees

I recently visited the Hollywood Costume Exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum*.  It was very popular. I went with my daughter and we were reduced to a shuffle as we wound round the different areas of the exhibition but that didn't matter. The slow progress gave us more time to look. I have to admit to being as star struck as anyone and standing in awe in front of the most iconic outfits: Scarlett  O'Hara's dress made from curtains, Marlene Dietrich's top hat and tails and Audrey Hepburn's Breakfast at Tiffany's Little Black Dress.

'Look!' We whispered to each other. 'That's it. The real one!' 

It put one back in touch with favourite stars, favourite films, favourite film scenes. It was also sobering to think that many of the stars who wore these costumes were dead while the clothes they wore lived on.  

For me (once I'd got past the boggling stage) the most interesting aspect of the whole exhibition was the research process that the designers went through to create these costumes, their painstaking attention to detail. The History Girls routinely post about costume. Marie Louise Jensen did a piece about Men's Clothing in the 1700's just this week. When you are writing historical fiction, it is important to know what your characters would be wearing. Finding out is often uppermost in our minds, that is why we blog about it. We look at different sources, just as the film designers do. Museums, like the V & A, with specialist departments can be very helpful, and then there are books on costume. There is also, of course, the internet. Sometimes helpful. Sometimes not. An internet search for '1940's knickers', for example, can take you to some very strange places. The garments featured under 'retro' bear little resemblance to my granny's pink bloomers or to the rubber roll ons I remember women struggling into in the Fifties. But one has to persist. it is important to know what one's character would be wearing, right down to their underwear.

As I shuffled round the exhibition, I realised that there was another dimension to this. It is not just important to know what a man or woman would be wearing in 1789, for example, but it is important to know what your character would be wearing. We have to know who our character is before we can decide what clothes he or she would put on in the morning. It is important to get the period right but clothes tell us a great deal about personality as well as position and status in life. I'd always instinctively known this, but here it was spelt out for me. One whole area was devoted to just this: Deconstruction.

'On every film, the clothes are half the battle in creating the character. I have a great deal of opinion about how my people are presented. We show a great deal by what we put on our bodies' 

Meryl Streep

One is always attracted to areas of special interest and one of mine just happens to be pirates. When I first saw Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, I immediately thought of Blackbeard. The pigtails and plaited beard, the stance. But the designers also channeled Keith Richards for both his 'look' and his personality. That was interesting. With care, one can improvise. An insight like that can make a character a whole lot more than a historical clothes horse. 

I was also halted at another point on my shuffle round. In front of the costumes for Shakespeare in Love, there was a quotation from Joseph Fiennes who played Shakespeare. When contemplating the part he looked for:

'[The] human element - all things [one] wouldn't associate with being a genius... I put aside all reverence and adopted the attitude that as soon as I put on those tights I was Will Shakespeare.'

Even though I had no idea that was how Joseph Fiennes found his way into the part, I immediately identified. When I was writing The Fool's Girl, I had to discover my own way round Shakespeare the genius. I did so by finding my Will Shakespeare in Mr Fiennes. When you see something like that, it is a good feeling, as though your insight is vindicated.

I found much to think about as I went round this exhibition. Just as it is on the screen, so it should be on the page.  Nothing is accidental. Everything is there by design and clothing should suit the character, not just by being right for the period but right for the person. 

Once in a while, costume and clothing can do something more.  One of the last exhibits is Judy Garland's costume from The Wizard of Oz. It is worth the long, slow shuffle. The power and magic of L. Frank Baum's fantasy is eloquently expressed in the contrast between Dorothy's faded, dusty blue gingham dress and the dazzling brilliance of the ruby slippers. It is all there in the costume. 

Celia Rees

www.celiarees.com

*The Exhibition is on until 27th January, so you still have time to catch it if you are quick.