Votes for Women by Elizabeth Robins

  

Title: Votes for Women: A Play in 3 Acts
Originally published: 1909 (First performed 1907)
Dates read: 4/3/18-4/6/18
Back to the Classics category: Female Author
Find out more about the Back to the Classics 2018 reading challenge HERE.
Read my other book reviews from the challenge HERE.

Author: Elizabeth Robins
Elizabeth Robins was born in 1862 and died in 1952, at the age of 90. Elizabeth's mother, an opera singer, was committed to an insane asylum when she was a child. Her father was an insurance broker and banker. Elizabeth was sent to study medicine in college, but at eighteen she ran away to become an actress. In 1885, Elizabeth Robins married the actor George Richmond Parks. In 1887, he committed suicide by jumping into the Charles River wearing a suit of theatrical armor. She never remarried and turned down offers of marriage from many men, including the playwright George Bernard Shaw and the publisher William Heinemann.

In 1888, Elizabeth traveled to London where she introduced British audiences to the work of Henrik Ibsen. Elizabeth produced and acted in several plays written by Ibsen including Hedda in Hedda Gabler and Nora in A Doll's House. These plays were a great success and for the next few years, Elizabeth Robins was one of the most popular actresses on the West End stage. In the 1890s her incipient feminism had been fuelled by witnessing the exploitation of actresses by actor-managers and by Ibsen's depiction of strong-minded women. Elizabeth became a strong feminist and was a member of various women groups including the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, Women’s Social and Political Union, Women Writers Suffrage League, and Actresses’ Franchise League.

Robins used her 15th-century farmhouse as a retreat for suffragettes recovering from hunger strike. It was also rumored that the house was used as a hiding place for suffragettes on the run from the police. She wrote a large number of speeches defending militant suffragettes between 1906 and 1912. However, Elizabeth herself never took part in these activities and so never experienced arrest or imprisonment. After women gained the vote, Robins took a growing interest in women's health care. Elizabeth persuaded many of her wealthy friends to give money and eventually the New Sussex Hospital for Women was opened. During the Second World War Elizabeth Robins went back to the United States. However, at the age of 88, she returned to London and passed 2 years later. (source)

Plot summary:
England; June 1905; Sunday noon-6pm. Accredited as the first Suffrage play.

Jean, young and naive, is engaged to the politician Stonor, who is up for election for Cabinet Minister. At her aunt's house, she meets the mysterious Miss Levering, an independent lady who has lived through a great deal in her past and is now fighting for women's rights.

When Jean hears Miss Levering talk about the horrible situation of young, poor and homeless women in England, she is shocked. Slowly she gets interested in the suffragette's movement, something her fiancé did not expect to be so strong. But then Jean learns that Stonor's annoyance about her involvement in the matter and her interest in Miss Levering has other reasons that dive into his past.

Favorite quotes:
"You'll never know how many things are hidden from women in good clothes. The bold, free look of a man at a woman he believes to be destitute - you must FEEL that look on you before you can understand a good half of history."

"Why does any woman take less wages than a man for the same work? Only because we can't get anything better. Do you really think we take them there low wages because we got a liking for low wages? No. We're just like you. We want as much as ever we can get. When we get our rights, employers won't be able to get rich on keeping you out of work and sweating us. If you men only could see it, we got the SAME cause, and if you helped us, you'd be helping yourselves."

"Men say if we persist in competing with them for the bigger prizes, they're dreadfully afraid we'd lose their beautiful protecting chivalry. Well, the beautiful chivalry of the employers of women doesn't prevent them from paying tenpence a day for sorting coal and loading and unloading carts - doesn't prevent them from forcing women to earn bread in ways worse still. So we won't talk about chivalry. It's being over-sarcastic. We'll just let this poor ghost of chivalry go - in exchange for a little plain justice."

"We've come to a place where we find there's a value in women apart from the value men see in them."

Review:
The play is a quick read and, if I read it on the weekend, could be finished in a single sitting. Act I was mostly about introducing the main characters and what their political stances were. Act II was outside at a Suffrage rally (my favorite part of the play). Act III brought information learned in the first 2 Acts together to create a climaxed ending.

The First Act was a little slow, but I think that was because I was expecting the fiery speeches found at a rally. The more I think about it, though, the Suffrage movement didn't just happen in the streets amongst passionate strangers, but also happened in the homes of friends and family having normal conversations.

The Second Act was wonderful, because it was at a rally that had multiple fiery speeches. The Third Act brought you back into the home to deal with more "domestic" life... but really also connects with the Suffrage movement. The ending is a bit predictable, but satisfying nonetheless. It was a good read and I highly suggest it to anyone at all interested in the history of Women.

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let Elizabeth Robins have the last words:

"I'm no longer merely a woman who has stumbled along the way. I'm one who has got up bruised and bleeding, wiped the dust from her hands and the tears from her face, and said to herself not merely, 'Here's one luckless woman!' but - 'Here is a stone of stumbling to many. Let's see if it can't be moved out other women's way.' And she calls people to come and help. No mortal man, let alone a woman BY HERSELF, can move that rock of offense. But if many help, the thing can be done."