Suffragette

Review by Pamela Zoslov

In 1912 London, Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) leads a life of unrelenting drabness. She works in a hot, steamy laundry in Bethnal Green, where she and other women workers suffer burns, chest coughs, leg ulcers and sexual molestation by the boss, all for 13 shillings a week. David Lloyd George (David Schiller), Chancellor of the Exchequer and future prime minister, asks the soft-spoken young woman — who's been suddenly pressed into speaking at Parliament on behalf of women's suffrage — “What does the vote mean to you?” “I thought,” she responds thoughtfully, “there is another way of living this life.”