"A vote is a fire-escape," Hilary Swank tells factory workers in HBO's film Iron-Jawed Angels. Showing women how much a vote can mean to them (like a fire-escape in a burning factory), this film is about radical suffragist Alice Paul's fight to pass the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote.
The film takes audience members from September 1912 to August 1920, the years in which Paul joined, formed, and led women's activists groups. Audience members watched as Paul, Lucy Burns, and their fellow suffragists led protests, staged parades, and, in the ultimate show of their determination to gain their rights, went on hunger strikes while imprisoned under false charges.
As Paul told a doctor sent to evaluate her mental condition while imprisoned, "I don't understand what there is to explain [about Paul's actions]. You want a means for self-expression. So do I. You want to satisfy personal ambitions. So do I. You want a voice under the government in which you love and live. So do I. Look into your heart, I swear mine is no different." The suffragists eventually received restitution when their inhumane imprisonment conditions were discovered, which included force-feeding through tubes, and publicity of their cause and suffering soared. Iron-Jawed Angels ends on the day of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, August 18, 1920, as Paul, Burns, and their fellow suffragists stand amidst a visually aesthetic shower of cut-out golden stars. The movie was presented by the Feminist Student Union, the College Democrats, College Republicans, Political Science Club, American Democracy Project, V-Club, Sociology Club, and HBO and was held on Wednesday, April 15, from 7-9 p.m.
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