Votes for Women: A Play in Three Acts

by Elizabeth Robins

1907. England. Jean, a young and somewhat ignorant woman, is engaged to the politician Stonor, who is up for election for Cabinet Minister. At her aunt Lady John's house, she meets the beautiful and mysterious Miss Levering, an independent lady who has lived through a great deal in her past and is now fighting for women's rights. When Jean hears Miss Levering talk about the horrible situation of young, poor and homeless women in England, she is shocked.

Slowly she gets interested in the suffragette's movement, something her fiancé did not expect to be so strong. But then Jean learns that Stonor's annoyance about her involvment in the matter and her interest in Miss Levering has other reasons that dive into his past.

Genres: Plays, Drama, 20th Century, Theatre

206 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1907

About the author

Elizabeth Robins (August 6, 1862 – May 8, 1952) was an actress, playwright, novelist, and suffragette.

Robins realised her income from acting was not stable enough to carry her. While Robins was busy being a successful actress, she had to leave England to look for her brother in Alaska, who had gone missing. Her experiences searching for her brother led her to write her novels, Magnetic North (written in 1904) and Come and Find Me (1908). Before this, she had written novels such as George Mandeville’s Husband (1894), The New Moon (1895), Below the Salt and Other Stories (1896) and several others under the name of C. E. Raimond. She explained her use of a pseudonym as a means of keeping her acting and writing careers separate but gave it up when the media reported that Robins and Raimond were the same. She enjoyed a long career as a fiction and nonfiction writer.

In her biography of Elizabeth Robins, Staging a Life, Angela John says, “It is possible to trace in Elizabeth’s writing from 1890s onwards an emerging feminist critique, clearly, but only partly, influenced by the psychological realism of Ibsen, which would find most confident expression in 1907 in her justly celebrated novel The Convert”. Robins’ main character, Vida, speaks to “male politicians and social acquaintances”, something very different from what the women of Robins’ time did – something very reminiscent of one of Ibsen’s ‘new women.’ Adapted from this novel is, Elizabeth Robins’ most famous play, Votes for Women! The first play to bring the “street politics of women’s suffrage to the stage”, Votes for Women! led to a flourish of suffrage drama. Elizabeth Robins first attended “open-air meetings of the suffrage union” when the Women’s Social and Political Union moved its headquarters from Manchester to London in 1906. It was then that she “abandoned” the current play she was writing and worked to complete the very first suffrage drama. “The more Robins became immersed in the work, the more she became converted to the cause”.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

From BBC radio 3 - Drama on 3:

Drama on 3 presents the first of three classic plays that responded to the growing freedom of women at the turn of the twentieth century.

Admired Conservative MP Geoffrey Stonor is relishing his engagement to the ebullient young heiress Jean Dunbarton until a chance encounter with the charismatic Vida Levering, an advocate of women's suffrage, appears to threaten them both - not just politically, but personally too.

Free download available at Project Gutenberg.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bettie's Books

[Jules · Rating 4 out of 5]

„If everybody said we were nice, well-behaved women, who‘d come to hear us?“

[jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful tribute to feminism

[lucy snow · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is not my favourite play i've read recently. i like the protest talk in the second act - very compelling, very clearly propaganda. there were slightly too many characters for me to actually care about any of them, though, and it was very confusing trying to dissect the backstory. i still don't think i actually understand the last act lol

act 2 is very reminiscent of the birth control commission scene of our ostriches by stopes - literally just the author speaking through her characters. fun stuff

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

We read this in my "banned books" course, and I'm glad I did. This was our first introduction into suffragette literature, which established the foundations of other novels we read, such as Ann Veronica.

Fun fact, Elizabeth Robins is from my hometown!

[j a z z y · Rating 3 out of 5]

only giving 3 stars bc of the sapphic subtext of the third act

[Sara Peris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Miss Levering the woman you are

[Judy]

Read for my "Getting Out the Vote: US Suffrage Literature" class.

[Karen]

The Top 10 Books About the Suffragettes

(1907)
This 1907 play was written by the American actress and writer, and follows Vida Levering, a New Woman radicalised by her turbulent past and trying to use her experience to carve a better life for other women. It is thought to have sparked the foundation of the Actresses Franchise League and a spate of copycat suffrage plays. But I love it for its caustic lines. ‘”Mad,” “Unsexed”’ spits Levering. “These are the words today. In the Middle Ages men cried out ‘Witch!’ and burnt her.”

[Justin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is not a play. This is a piece of propaganda that bills itself as a play in order to orate at the audience. Even as an oration it's still bad. It lacks the artistic merit, subtlety, emotion, and power of better feminist speeches like Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I A Woman."

[Manuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I am no where near the intended audience, I appreciate the significance that this play would have on Modernist plays and on the British Suffragette movement in the early 20th century.

[Sophia]

Read it for school

[Matt Tuozzo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Act 2 is a particularly good read.