Kate is the female protagonist in the play, a feisty and powerful woman, who puts justice before her own personal happiness. In the play she rejects a marriage offer in favour of continuing the case to help her younger brother out. She openly reads books by socialist leaders and she comes out as a suffragette within the earliest moments of the play.
Kate is likable and fantastically determined. At one point however when her father is riddled with exhaustion and arthritis, and Kate has been jilted by her lover and admits to being paid just £2 a week by the suffragettes, there is an emotional moment when she opens her heart to her father and to the audience.
"[The suffragette movement] feels like a hopeless cause."
"A hopeless cause? I've never heard you say that before."
"I've never felt it before".
It shows that even the most remarkable and strongwilled people have their moments where they feel completely lost and unsure as to the direction they're going in. The father's arthritis worsens and the young boy Ronnie, whom the play is all about, begins to grow up and care less about the situation he was placed in when a 5 shilling postal order was stolen at school. The characters grow up and the family loses money trying to pay for better lawyers to defend their child. Despite these situational tremors, the case is won.
"Yes father, it would appear that we've won," says Kate at the end of the play. There is no celebration, no joy, just an acknowledgement that 'right has been done'. The family are exhausted, weakened by the experience, but, as her father says: "I wouldn't have done anything differently."
I hope that this job hunt ends with a positive result.
Like Kate, I won't celebrate brashly, because I know that at the end of all this, if it ever does end, I'll be exhausted and relieved.
But I'd like it to end eventually, because I want to prove, just like Kate and her father, that I can win and defeat the odds.
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