Film Analysis: Iron Jawed Angels

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Raised as a Quaker and educated at Swarthmore and Penn University; Alice Paul was a young woman in 1912 with the tenacity and drive to fight for women suffrage. At the time, only nine states permitted women to vote, Paul wanted a Constitutional Amendment to change the law and allow all American women the right to vote. Although the movie Iron Jawed Angels was a period piece, it had a modern day feel by the type of music and the way in which it was filmed, as it followed a group of suffragists on their quest for women’s rights. Alice Paul and her close friend Lucy Burns convinced the heads of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), Carrie Chapman Catt and Reverend Anna Howard Shaw, to allow them to lead the Congressional Committee…show more content…
When speaking with Emily Leighton when she states her husband doesn’t approve of her volunteering, and she sees no need to embarrass him, Paul responds; “women like you are worse than anti-suffragist, you perpetuate the lie every day at breakfast.” (Iron Jawed Angels, 2004). However, she does soften as she does not believe her followers should be on the picket line unless she is also picketing, which makes her participative. She lets the mothers make their own decision of picketing and does not ridicule their decision. Paul was participative all the way through; she marched in the parade, wrote articles, made speeches, and picketed knowing it would lead to her arrest. Paul was a Transformational Leader; her goal in life was transformation of women’s rights for equality. She was as involved as her followers were in doing the manual work to get support for their movement, she handed out flyers, marched, picketed, made calls – she was willing to do whatever was

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