Good morning! Today I am going to look at a documentary on Emmeline Pankhurst a leader in the British Women’s suffrage movement. The run time for this documentary is 51:20. The documentary is called Emmeline Pankhurst: The Making of a Militant.
Emmeline Pankhurst led the suffrage movement in Britain. Under her, an army of women took to the streets of Britain to demand the right to vote. They acted at the time, contrary to what was expected of women at the time. Sally Lindsay an actress takes a look at the life of Emmeline Pankhurst. She takes a rare look at the woman whose personal loves and losses transformed her from a working-class woman into a militant activist. Who was the real Emmeline Pankhurst? The story begins with the words of Emmeline talking about the militancy of men versus the militancy of women. She was a resident of Manchester, England and Manchester formed her growing up years. It was a city that was full of campaigners. Sally interviews the nephew of Emmeline Pankhurst, which was a very nice touch to this documentary to interview family members. She learns more about Emmeline’s childhood. Emmeline was the oldest of eleven children and her parents were politically active in Manchester. The nephew talks about how she was a strong personality and was a voracious reader. Her father insisted on her reading the newspaper to him in the morning. Her parents campaign against slavery and for women’s rights. Emmeline’s earliest memories were of being with her mother collecting donations for the anti-slavery movement. Her father was active in the theater and was an actor. She would have learned how to talk and special awareness. These skills would come in handy later in life when she started campaigning for women’s rights. She was a woman who was between the Victorian and Edwardian Ages. Sally continues to explore what life would have looked like for the Victorian woman. She meets with Charlotte Wildman, a professor, to learn about how life would have been for women. Manchester was a city that was built for men, in fact, there were no public toilets for women. Manchester was a hotbed for radicalism and would eventually become the key to women’s suffrage. Charlotte introduces a little-known woman named Lydia Becker. She was one of the earliest advocates for women’s suffrage. Emmeline would have witnessed her speak growing up. This was a very interesting section learning about a relatively unknown woman in the women’s suffrage movement. Charlotte even shows how Lydia was depicted in the newspapers to Sally’s horror. Emmeline would have seen these images and knew what was going to come if she pressed for the women’s right to vote. Sally then introduces another little-known woman from the right for women’s suffrage: Lily Maxwell. Lydia Becker marched Lily Maxwell to the polling place in Manchester to cast her vote, fifty years before women had the right to vote. Lily was a widow who owned a shop. She paid rent and taxes. She found herself on the electoral registers for Manchester. This would have caused a sensation in the National Newspapers. There were headlines for this vote while there were others that were against it. However, there was a court case and a judge declared that women did not have a right to vote. Emmeline would have met Richard Pankhurst in Manchester and the pair would be dynamite together. They would marry within months of meeting each other and would have five children together. To learn more about this period in Emmeline’s life continue to watch the rest of the episode. I really wish one of the history channels such as Timeline or Absolute History would post Lucy Worsley’s documentary on Women’s suffrage. I thought that was really well done and could be shown in a classroom, but I would want to watch it again to make sure. That said, Sally did a really good job in exploring the life of Emmeline Pankhurst and was curious about the subject. This documentary was divided into chapters for easy mining for clips. Overall, it was very well done and I liked that family participated in the documentary. It would go on my list of potential documentaries to show in a history classroom and would be something for research purposes too.
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The purpose of this blog is to share information on what can be used in a classroom, private school, or home school setting as well as serve as a portfolio of my personal and professional work. The reviews are my opinions and should be treated as such. I just want to provide a tool for teachers to select documentaries for their classrooms. |