Thoughts on SUFFRAGETTE

We went to see `Suffragette’ the other day and I have to say I found it interesting as movies go, quite the best performance being that of Meryl Streep of whom we saw far, far too little. The scene where Emily Davison steps in front of the King’s horse was particularly harrowing for obvious reasons, and also believable. Other aspects of the film I found less believable; the manner in which Maud the heroine so easily gives up her small son being one of them. And it’s also odd that the would-be adoptive parents of the boy choose to take a four year old in the first place when it was surely a time when society was knee deep in unwanted babies. I found Maud’s working class vowel sounds unconvincing but there I’m being picky. Having said all that the subject matter was thought provoking, attention grabbing even. Here in New Zealand where women got the vote so very long ago it seems almost laughable that it should have been such a laborious process for Englishwomen. All this, aided by the fact that I now own a Kindle Paperwhite, spurred me on to read something of the life of Mary Wollstonecraft whose `A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women’ was written as long ago as 1792. Now there was a Feminist to knock your socks off! A solo mother in the days when such a state would be likely to ensure whole suburbs would cross the street to avoid you! Finally mother of two daughters, one of whom would grow up to attain even greater and longer lasting notoriety than her mother as the young bride of Percy Bysshe Shelley and the author of `Frankenstein’. Her mother would undoubtedly have been proud of her it has to be said. I must say that Mother Mary surprised me. I saw her as the kind of woman who would munch up errant lovers for breakfast rather than collapse in soggy tearful heaps when not paid sufficient emotional attention. If those who now write about her life are correct (Janet Todd in `Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life’ for example) Mary the Mother reacted almost as badly as I have done myself when spurned in love, fruitlessly pursuing the objects of her passion and begging explanations. You just don’t expect that kind of neediness in one who had just written `A Vindication’ - it doesn’t exactly go with the territory does it? So bewildered am I that today I intend to make a start on Claire Tomalin’s `The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft’ in the hope that she will be able to provide some clarification. And hopefully she may prove to be easier to read than Janet Todd.