Film Review: Iron Jawed Angels HBO presentation 15 February 2004
Directed by Katja von Garnier
Starring: Hilary Swank, Anjelica Huston, Julia Ormand, Patrick Dempsey, Frances O’Conner
This is the story of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers who lived only 90 years ago. It wasn’t until the year 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote. It wasn’t something freely given. It was a hard fought war against women who had the audacity to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House in 1917 carrying signs asking for the vote. And by the by the time they were done, they were barely alive.
Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden’s blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of ‘obstructing sidewalk traffic in front of the White House.’ They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.
For weeks the women’s only water came from an open pail. Their food was infested with worms. When Alice Paul went on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited.
Woodrow Wilson tried to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. The doctor refused saying “Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.”
News of the treatment of the women reached the press and the women were released. They continued their non-violent protests. Pressure was put on Woodrow Wilson to confirm the nineteenth amendment to the constitution and he did so giving every woman the right to vote.
Iron Jawed Angels is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I can pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. Some women won’t vote in November because – why exactly? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn’t matter? It’s raining? Frankly voting doesn’t seem like a privilege anymore. It seems like an obligation. Statistics tell us that only 40% of women get out and vote.
What would those women think of the way we use or don’t use our right to vote? If you see this movie, the right to vote will become valuable all over again.
The Yocum Library owns this film. It is on the reserve shelf behind the circulation desk under Dr. Singleton’s name. You may request it at the circulation desk.
