First Journal of Second Term

       In this journal, I will introduce you the film “Iron Jawed Angels”. I chose this American drama because of its historical and real life topic and effective scenes displaying what happened in those days.

       Firstly, about its topic, the film tells how American women get the right to vote by focusing on the effect of feminist-political activists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns on women’s suffrage movement during 1910s. Especially, the fact that the plot is cited from a real historical event makes the film much more interesting and worth to see. The film begins as Alice Paul and Lucy Burns return from England, where they participated in the women's suffrage movement. Once the pair becomes more active within the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), they begin to understand that their ideas were much too forceful for the established activists, particularly Carrie Chapman Catt. The pair leaves NAWSA and found the National Women's Party (NWP), a better way to fight for women's rights. Over time, problems occur as NAWSA leaders criticize NWP tactics, such as protesting against wartime President Woodrow Wilson and picketing outside the White House with "Silent Sentinels." Male supremacists famously (and infamously) label the women "iron-jawed angels"*. Relations between the American government and the NWP protesters also intensify, as many women are arrested for their actions, though the official charge is "obstructing traffic." The women are sent to the Occoquan Workhouse for 60-day terms where they suffer under unsanitary and inhumane conditions. During this time, Paul and other women undertake a hunger strike, during which paid guards force-feed them milk and raw eggs. News of their treatment leaks to the media through the husband of one of the imprisoned women, a U.S. Senator, who has been able to lobby for a visit (the suffragists are otherwise unable to see visitors or lawyers) by putting a letter in his shirt. Pressure is put on President Wilson as the NAWSA seizes the opportunity to try for the nineteenth amendment to the Constitution.
         Secondly, several scenes of the film really affected me. For example force feeding scene and its background music made me cry while watching. Aside from this, it is my favorite scene in which Alice wants warders to open the windows, but she is refused. Then she flings her boot against the window. I think it is a great expression of rebellion.

       In conclusion, this film not only tells women’s struggle and their acquisition of the right to vote but also points that women do not have to bow to the pressures and should break the sociopolitical taboos. In my opinion, it is one of the must-see movies in order to understand the link between persistence and achievement.

* The film derives its title from Massachusetts Representative Joseph Walsh, who in 1917 opposed the creation of a committee to deal with women's suffrage. Walsh thought the creation of a committee would be yielding to "the nagging of iron-jawed angels" and referred to the Silent Sentinels as "bewildered, deluded creatures with short skirts and short hair."