she really is a side character. She hardly shows up and is just as absent as the father too busy being a suffragette. Only she doesn't get the redemption arc the father does.

The fact that the mother's absenteeism requires the hiring of a nanny is an oddity that goes just as unexamined in the movie as in Heretic's post, funnily enough. In retrospect, I guess this came out at a time when the idea of criticising a suffragette for being a suffragette was absolutely out of the question. Still, I think the absence of any implied criticism for the mother is not necessarily support for her lifestyle. I maintain she is depicted as faintly stupid and ridiculous: 'We are all going to throw things at the prime minister!' 'I am off to lead my imprisoned sisters in song...!' ...These are the daily activities that keep her from her children.

Still, there's a part in the dad's song where she says to him 'the children are missing!' and he just responds 'splendid, splendid' because he's too preoccupied singing his own song about his life. But a similar example happens in her own song about votes for women, where the (old) nanny tells her the kids are missing and she ignores it.

She is present in the finale, where the family have an outing together at the park to fly a kite, in a song which is once again led by the father George. I had forgotten that George even gets his job back in this scene. As Heretic says it really seems more like the message is about family cohesion. EDIT: holy shit, she even takes her 'Votes For Women' sash and uses it as the improvised tail for the kite... I mean if we're talking messages... Or maybe she thinks it's good feminist advertising, idk, but it's obviously unreadable once the kite is in the air.