The Militant Suffragette

In A Militant Sufragette (1914) Asta Nielsen plays a young Englishwoman caught up in the cause. The sweet harmonies of the home are vividly contrasted with the strife and turmoil of a militant suffragette. Upon hearing the wild oratory of her older and homelier sisters, she joins the window-smashing brigade of frenzied feminists. Riots in Parliament, bombings, and prison force-feedings – all notorious aspects of the British fight – are carefully re-created in the film. Order is restored in the end, however, and the last scene shows home as the true sphere of woman. —W. Stephen Bush