Vera Farmiga as Ruza Wenclawska, also known as Rose Winslow
Rose Winslow, a polish immigrant originally named Ruza Wenclawska, worked in textile mills from the age of 11 until she developed tuberculosis around the age of 19. After she got sick and was no longer able to work in a factory, she began working with the Consumers’ League, Women’s Trade Union League, Woman’s Political Union, and then as a public speaker for the National Woman’s Party (NWP) in an attempt to reach her goal of women having fair treatment within the work environment (“Photographs from the,” 1916).
Ruza Wenclawska
While working with the National Woman’s Party, Rose Winslow was arrested in 1917 for picketing in front of the Whitehouse. After her arrest she was held in the Occoquan Workhouse with other members of the NWP, where she participated in a hunger strike and was consequently force fed under the order of prison authorities. In her prison diary she wrote the following about her experience: “the poor soul who fed me got liberally besprinkled during the process. I heard myself making the most hideous sounds… One feels so forsaken when one lies prone and people shove a pipe down one’s stomach,”(Starving for women’s, n. d.).
While the film Iron Jawed Angels used Rose’s character as a composite character to represent all working class women that contributed to the women’s suffrage movement, it also downplayed her role in the movement because her character was not given any real depth in the film. Whereas in real life, the New York Times shows that Rose Winslow was a major player in the suffrage movement by including her name in articles concerning the hunger strike and by mentioning her as a speaker at NWP events (“Joins hunger strike,”1917 and “Predicts suffrage will,” 1917). The film indicates that Winslow was inspired to join the suffrage movement; after Alice Paul pointed out that a woman with the right to vote is also a woman able to voice her opinions, such as the need for a safer working environment. Historically, it is unclear as to when Winslow was first introduced to Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party; however, we know that in 1913, media of her time were still associating her with the Women’s Political Union and by 1917 she was considered to be part of the Woman’s Party (“Author decries use,” 1913 and “Joins hunger strike,” 1917).
Out of the Darkness 