영화 Enola Holmes에 재현된 여성참정권 운동: 노망과 광기 사이, 위험한 여자들

Abstract

This paper presents a close-reading of Enola Holmes (2020) with intense focus on the movie’s representation of a historical event, the women’s suffrage movement in Britain. While the nineteenth-century gender discourse of separate spheres strictly prohibited women’s engagement in public activities, the same period also witnessed women’s efforts to venture into what was traditionally male-dominated spaces. One of the most intensified efforts to gain political rights was women’s struggle to win the right to vote. Based on the 1884 Reform Act, Enola Holmes’s message is clear-cut. The movie starts with a straightforward agenda that supports women’s suffrage movement. Ironically, however, it makes no direct reference to it. While portraying the women’s suffrage movement ensures the movie’s political correctness as the movement is a historical event whose cause and legitimacy has already been proved, this paper questions the validity of the movie’s seeming celebration of the heroine’s “victory” in bringing about a meaningful change in the electoral system. One of the inexplicable things about the movie is that it remains unclear whether the movie is set in 1884 or 1900. The opening scene claims that Enola was born in 1884 and is now 16 years old. As the movie goes on, however, it contradicts itself by presenting the 1884 Reform Act as its contemporary political situation. With this confusion over its timeline, the movie erases the critical time period during which women’s suffrage movement took on a violent turn. Put differently, without a recognition of this period, the militant suffrage movement that the movie aims to explore is not justified. The distortion of historical events eventually undermines Enola’s apparent achievement. By helping Tewkesbury and ensuring the passing of the Reform Act, Enola assists the “lord in distress” and vanishes from sight.