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Iron Jawed Angels Essay

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Film Review: Iron Jawed Angels Traveling back to the early 1900’s, the film “Iron Jawed Angels” takes us on an unforgettable ride by recreating a story very few have heard about. This little-known story focuses on the hardships of Alice Paul, played by Hilary Swank, who gives up her personal and emotional life in order to fight for women’s suffrage in America. This remarkable true story takes place in Philadelphia, where youthful suffragist activists, Alice Paul and her friend Lucy Burns request a meeting with the leaders of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). This association was formed by Susan B. Anthony in 1890 and has proven to be significant in promoting women’s rights. Through this meeting, the audience is shown …show more content…

Alice quickly becomes the most defiant prisoner by breaking a window and going on a hunger strike, all while placed in solitary confinement. These actions lead officers to take Alice to an examination in the psychiatric ward. The doctor reports back to President Wilson and shares that he found no signs of delusion in Alice. This means she can return to the prison with the rest of the women. Upon her return, Alice’s defiant nature encourages the other suffragettes to join in on the hunger strike. The warden of the prison begins to force-feed the women in order to make sure they do not become martyrs. As this sequence of events plays out, a woman officer at the prison provides Alice a pen and paper in order to communicate freely with the other inmates. On the other side of the bars, Catt meets with President Wilson and tries to make him repay her for her years of loyalty by supporting the suffrage amendment. Wilson refuses to do so until the public is informed of the mistreatment of the women at the prison. The “Iron Jawed Angels” become popular amongst the public once again and Wilson is pressed to support the amendment. Alice Paul and the other suffragettes are released from prison and able to witness President Wilson come out in support of the movement in his speech to

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Until the early 20th century, many women lacked rights that men had. The movie Iron Jawed Angels shows the women’s efforts to gain the right to vote. The main character, Alice Paul, is a suffragist who asked President Woodrow Wilson, “Mr. President, how long must women wait to get their liberty? Let us have the rights we deserve” (Alice Paul). When the President first went into office, he did not support women's suffrage.

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Timeline of Important Events in Alice Paul’s Life January 11, 1885 Alice Paul is born. May 13, 1901 Alice graduates at the age of only 16 and is first in her class. October 1910

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The women were often arrested on made up charges and were jailed when they refused to pay fines. They were sent to Occoquan Workhouse, a prison in Virginia (Carol, Myers, Lindman, n.d., National Woman 's Party, Picketing and Prison section, para 2). The women staged hunger strikes and “were forcibly fed in a tortuous method” (Carol, Myers, Lindman, n.d., National Woman 's Party, Picketing and Prison section, para 2). The women were beaten and thrown into “cold, unsanitary, and rat-infested cells” (Carol, Myers, Lindman, n.d., National Woman 's Party, Picketing and Prison section, para 2). Eventually prison officials moved Alice to a sanitarium to get her declared insane but the news of her treatment, along with the other women, became public.

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Alice Paul has changed American society by being an American suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist. Alice Paul dedicated her life to fighting for women's equality. She created the National Woman’s Party in the year 1916. Also cofounded in the Congressional Union. Alice Paul’s actions encouraged the passage the 19th amendment.

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He sold her babies!” (249). Not even Alice’s suicide was her own choice, proving that her final act was not one of subversiveness, but of submission, because she had nothing left to live for and refused to fight for her liberty. She took the easy way out. Dying was not a final act of rebellion and was instead an act of complete loss.

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Despite their endeavors to escape their bondage, the women behind the bars could not escape because the men found alternative tactics to keep them in confinement. The bars strangle and cut off the heads of the women that climb out of the pattern, “it turns them upside down and makes their eyes white!” resonating to an envision of a crazy woman. The narrator herself is a great example of how effective men were at establishing alternative tactics like this. The narrator was classified as having hysterical tendencies, like most women of the nineteenth century, were when they complained of pain, anxiety, fatigue, or depression, as a source of suppressing their agency through prescribed isolation and prohibited writing.

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