The Woman in the Cupboard

Today is Election Day in the United States. It’s the culmination of a hard fought, often nasty, verbal battle. For some people, (perhaps most) it’s a huge relief that the whole thing is over. For others, it’s just another day. They don’t participate, believing their vote doesn’t count. For me, Election Day is special and exciting.

However, I didn’t always feel that way until a vacation to London. During my visit, an English friend and I met up at Parliament and listened to a lively debate. Afterward we walked to a lobby where several Members of Parliament (MPs) congregated. A few surreptitiously pulled my journalist friend aside to give him “scoops” for his newspaper. One MP recognized my American accent and kindly offered to show us around, including a chapel in the House of Commons.

A guard unlocked the chapel door and we walked into an elaborately decorated room with stained glass windows, a vaulted ceiling and an intricately tiled floor. But the MP didn’t linger. He led us to the back of the room, out one side, up several stairs and stopped in front of a rather ordinary looking wooden door. Opening it, he motioned for us to step inside what appeared to be a janitor’s closet. Staying outside, he closed the door. My friend and I looked at each other, bewildered why we were standing in a tiny closet next to an upright Hoover.

Sensing our confusion the MP called out, “Look at the plaque on the door.” The plaque was dedicated to the brave suffragette, Emily Wilding Davison, who hid in the broom cupboard (closet) the night before the 1911 census and emerged during the next day’s count. Why did she commit this act of defiance? So she could legally write that her place of residence on census day was the House of Commons and thus claim that she had the same political rights as men.

I wondered how Emily Davison felt as she waited alone in the darkness and suffocating silence of the closet. Was she scared not knowing what would happen once she was discovered? Or, while curled up in this cramped space waiting for morning, did she fortify herself by envisioning a time when she, her daughters and future generations of women could vote?

I knew that suffragettes had been jailed, tortured, ridiculed and shunned while pursuing the right for women to vote. But it seemed so long ago and not relevant to my life. Yet, with a flash of insight, I realized that less than one hundred years ago it was illegal for women to vote in the U.S.!  A right I took for granted.

I returned to the U.S. with a changed perspective. Now, in addition to a right, I feel that it is a privilege and a responsibility to vote. When I mark my ballot I feel grateful for women in the U.S. and other countries who had a dream and fought for the right to vote…so I can vote. I am hopeful that one day everyone will have be able to have a say in their government.

 

To see the plaque dedicated to Emily Wilder Davison, go to: http://www.explore-parliament.net/playMovie.htm?nssMovieName=0902