We've Come Along Way

Four friends met to watch a movie. We ate popcorn and once the DVD was set up we watched the movie Suffragettes.  I found the movie to be sad, yet in some respects, inspiring. It made me realize how hard it has been for women to get to vote and to be treated fairly and equally. I was shocked at the way men treated women in England and how hard women tried to be heard. Some of the women left husbands and children to join the fight for equality.

The impression I got from the movie is that a woman was a man's property. The main character finds this out when she is thrown out of her home and her child given away. Even though she knew women were not treated fairly, her husband's actions forces her to join the suffragettes and fight the double standards. The scenes of how the police manhandled the women was cruel and hateful. Jailing the women and keeping them locked up in ugly conditions was horrible to watch. At one point, there is a terrible scene of force feeding the main character. Women factory workers were pawns and male owners could do as they pleased with the female workers. One supervisor in the movie went after a young girl and I hated watching the leering man touch the young girl.

When the women decide to go directly to the king as he attends a horse race, I thought that maybe things would change. They changed all right, but not as I thought it would. I will not tell how the movie ends in case you want to see it. It is a good movie but quite depressing. 

My thoughts are that every women who is able to vote should get out and vote. The women in the past fought courageous battles for the right to vote and we should not be lazy about casting our vote. Voting is a privilege we should be honored to do!

After the movie we enjoyed dinner with salad, a large cheese and vegetable pizza and a glass of wine!

"I thought I had been a suffragist

before I became a Poor Law Guardian,

but now I began to think about the

vote in woman's hands not only as

a right but as a desperate necessity."

Emmeline Pankhurst

About the same time as I was writing my blog about Suffragettes I received an e-mail from a friend of mine that seem to fit right into the subject of voting. I will paraphrase the e-mail.

Stage coach companies were big businesses in the past. Passengers, freight, gold and silver were carried on the stage coach. Bandits and robberies were a constant threat and the drivers were skilled and fearless men. Charles Darkey Parkhurst was a driver and his feats were extraordinary. He was a good shot and could slice open the end of an envelope or knock a cigar out of a mouth. He chewed tobacco, smoked, and drank. He died at the age of sixty-seven in the year of 1879.

His obituary: On Sunday last there died a person known as Charley Parkhurst, Age 67, who was well known to residents as a stage coach driver He was in early days acclaimed one of the most expert manipulators of the reins. It was discovered when friendly hands were preparing him for his final rest that Charley Parkhurst was unmistakably a well-developed woman. Her name was Charlotte Parkhurst that had discovered life as a man was easier and masqueraded as one for the rest of her life. She voted on November 3, 1868, dressed as a man, which was fifty-two years before women were given the right to vote!