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.

A Visit from The Daughters of Time - Celia Rees

On July 1st, Catherine Johnson and I visited Cornelius Vermuyden School on Canvey Island to talk about The Daughters of Time Anthology and our stories, Return to Victoria (Emily Wilding Davison - my story) and The Lad That Stands Before You (Mary Seacole - Catherine's). 

Emma Wilding Davison

We were there as part of Pop Up http://pop-up.org.uk who had generously supplied copies of the anthology to the school. I had been at a Pop Up event earlier in the year, in the week that The Daughters of Time was published. I couldn't resist waving my publication copies and telling everyone about it in the schools I visited. I was talking in girls' schools in the East End and there was so much interest from staff and students that I ended up giving my copies to the schools involved. Teachers loved the idea of short stories about women in history and as an ex teacher of English and History I could see how useful such an anthology could be in the classroom (Note to publishers - schools LOVE short stories because they are, well, short and an anthology like this can generate an almost infinite amount of interesting work - of which more below).

Lest I start a gender panic, Cornelius Vermuyden is a MIXED school. Yes, boys were reading about women in history and YES, they were interested. 

I think Daughters of Time is a great book for schools - as one of the teachers said some of the boys didn't notice they were all women until it was pointed out - it's short and interesting and lends itself to all sorts of discussions and questions.

Catherine Johnson

Books don't have to be gendered, nor should they be, but that's probably a different blog. 

Gemma Holland, who was organising the excellent Pop Up events was at one of my sessions and thought that The Daughters of Time would be a very good book to include in the Pop Up programme. Coincidently, Catherine Johnson was visiting the very same school a few days after me and I mentioned that she was a Daughter of Time, too. Would we like to do a session together? Would we? Yes, we would.

The unique thing about Pop Up is that they supply the school with books, so the students have read your book and have done some work of their own. Both Catherine and I found this a transforming experience and we really enjoyed working together. 

Catherine comments on:

...the wonderfulness of talking to a group of students who have actually read the work being discussed. The thing that made these sessions different and completely refreshing was working alongside another author ... having someone to bounce off, to share and explore ideas with alongside the students was brilliant and added, I think, an extra layer of depth to our talks. I wish all my author visits could be conducted like this.

Both our stories led on to wider discussion and because the students had read the stories and completed work based on them, we could have a proper debate. This was education in its truest sense. These children of 2014 were shocked that women could not vote and horrified by the treatment of suffragettes under the Cat and Mouse Act. We could have been there all day talking about whether Emily Wilding Davison meant to cash in the return stub of her train ticket or cash in her chips. I very much appreciated the contribution from one young man who knew his way around horses and who explained to us exactly what would happen if someone stepped out in front of a horse at full gallop. His expert knowledge brought the debate to a close.

Tattenham Corner, Derby Day, 1913

Things were no less spirited when it came to Catherine's story. The students were equally shocked by the racism, endemic in the 19th Century, that prevented Mary Seacole, although eminently experienced and qualified, from serving as a nurse under Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War. They practically cheered when Catherine described how Seacole went anyway and set up her own hospital, The British Hotel, practically on the battlefield. 

Mary Seacole

British Hotel

They were also taken aback to know that boys, the same age as those sitting in the audience, served as soldiers and that women sometimes went to war disguised.

Susie King Taylor

Boy Soldiers - Crimea

Kady Brownell

 The discussions ranged far beyond the confines of the stories we had written. As Catherine says, 

One reaction I will treasure is the surprised look on the last class of Year 7s when they heard women only achieved equal pay recently!

It was a fantastic day and one we will both remember.  For it to be as good as this, a great deal of work had to be done, by the Pop Up team who made it possible, but also by Sue Goldsmith and the teachers at Cornelius Vermuyden School, who showed real commitment to the project, and not least by the students themselves who showed such great interest and such imaginative responses to the short stories in the anthology. Their creative work was really impressive. 

Figure of Mary Seacole - my particular favourite

 

The final word goes to Cornelius Vermuyden School:

I just wanted to let you know that our Home Project event was brilliant and the presentation last night was lovely. The work the students had done was really stunning.

The students are still talking about both you and Catherine. It has really given the text meaning. My year 7s talk about you guys as if they've known you for years.

 One student actually made Mary Seacole [see above]. Catherine had said that she used to be little known in history, she is very well known by our year 7.

Sue Goldsmith,  English Department.

Catherine Johnson has just won The Young Quills Award for Historical Fiction for her novel, Sawbones.

Celia Rees

www.celiarees.com 

Fight for the Right - Emily Davison and the Internet - Celia Rees

Bossy Girls, Cranky Ladies, Daughters of Time? The History Girls have blogged about them all. We now have our own anthology, no news to anybody, and I can't resist a bit of a trumpet. I have to admit that when the anthology was first mooted by Mary Hoffman, I couldn't immediately think of any one woman to write about. It was not until later that day, when I was talking to my daughter, Catrin, that an idea began to form. We were talking about suitable candidates and she suggested Emily Wilding Davison, the suffragette who threw herself under the King's horse on Derby Day, 1913. She mentioned the return ticket to Epsom that Emily had about her person and suddenly a story began to form.

The actual ticket is in the collection of the Women's Library which was in the process of moving from its historic home in Aldgate to LSE amid some controversy Future of Women's Library but I did not have to visit it to view the historic ticket. It was there for me to see - on the internet. I'm a fiction writer, and although historical accuracy is vital and I'm meticulous in checking my facts I'm not necessarily looking for the same information as a writer of non fiction. I do visit libraries to consult books and archives on occasion but it is not always necessary for me to do so. In this case, I just wanted to see the ticket. And there it was.

Emily Wilding Davison's dramatic intervention in the 1913 Derby was recorded by newspaper photographers there to report on the race and also by a novel form of news reporting: the pathe newsreel.

 Emily Davison throws herself under the kings horse

The cameras were there to record Derby Day, Emily Davison's intervention in the race was recorded by accident. The viewing is chilling. The short clip shows the build up to the race, crowds arriving, the race course itself, the runners, the start of the race, but all the time the viewer knows what's coming. I viewed the footage over and over again, not just to see frame by frame what happened, but to see everything else: the people, the vehicles, the course, the stands, the horses; details that add to my palette, help to give the scene immediacy, make it convincing and vivid and add that trace of deja vu dread, of disaster about to happen. Without the internet, I doubt that I'd have been able to see the film, or the dramatic newspaper coverage, so describing it convincingly and with accuracy would have been that much more difficult.

Not everything you find makes its way into a story. Emily Wilding Davison also hid in a broom cupboard in the House of Commons during the night of the 1911 Census. An event recorded on this plaque by Tony Benn M.P.

He said:  'I have put up several plaques—quite illegally, without permission; I screwed them up myself. One was in the broom cupboard to commemorate Emily Wilding Davison, and another celebrated the people who fought for democracy and those who run the House. If one walks around this place, one sees statues of people, not one of whom believed in democracy, votes for women or anything else. We have to be sure that we are a workshop and not a museum.'

Tony Benn died last week and with his passing, we have lost a man of great principle, one who did not forget the sacrifice of others and carried on the fight for the rights of all. 

Read Return to Victoria

Interview in the Overflowing Library

www.celiarees.com