Women for Votes

A farce set in the Tilsbury drawing room, where the question of women's suffrage transforms a polite household into a battlefield of ideals. Mrs. Josephine Tilsbury wishes to embrace the movement for her stepdaughter Mildred's sake, while her friend Mrs. Imogene Brown arrives with her own agenda. Into this combustible mix comes Mr. Becker, a cynic who argues against women's involvement in voting with gleeful provocation, and Mildred herself, a young woman who aspires to make her voice heard in a world determined to silence her. The play unfolds through witty dialogues and absurd situations, where the earnest fight for equality collides with the ridiculous social conventions that confine women to parlors and propriety. Written in 1912, when British suffragettes were chaining themselves to railings and being force-fed in prison, Hughes offers something simultaneously lighter and more revealing: a comedy that shows just how ridiculous the arguments against women voting truly were. The laughter is the point. When you watch these characters debate whether a woman can possibly possess the intellect for citizenship, the absurdity speaks for itself.