Did Lizzie Borden really become a suffragette? The truth behind Monster’s unexpected ending

One of the more surprising parts of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story comes right at the end, when Lizzie Borden decides to put her infamous reputation to good use and become a suffragette.

The latest season of the Netflix series is based on the real-life case of Lizzie, who was accused of murdering her father Andrew and stepmother Abby with a hatchet at their home in Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1892.

Lizzie was ultimately acquitted of both murders the following year, and no one else was ever charged. But Monster takes some pretty huge liberties with what happened both before and after the trial (and during, for that matter), including her having a romantic relationship with the Borden family maid, Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan.

And the fictionalisation doesn’t stop after Lizzie is acquitted, because the finale depicts the pair reuniting and becoming heavily involved in the women’s suffrage movement. Lizzie even uses some of her $300,000 (over $10 million today) inheritance to help fund it. 

So, was Lizzie Borden actually a suffragette?

In short, no. There is no established historical evidence that Lizzie Borden was ever involved in the women’s suffrage movement.

In Monster, Lizzie initially struggles with life after her acquittal. Despite moving into the enormous Maplecroft mansion with her sister Emma, she can’t escape her reputation, and becomes horrified when she sees children dressed as her for Halloween and singing the infamous “Lizzie Borden took an axe” rhyme.

After Emma leaves and Bridget eventually returns to Lizzie, the pair decide to start a new life together. Lizzie seeks forgiveness for the murders and, wanting to make something meaningful out of it, she and Bridget throw themselves into the fight for women’s right to vote.

Monster then jumps forward to what appears to be 1920, with Lizzie and Bridget celebrating alongside other suffragettes after the ratification of the 19th Amendment. This was a landmark moment that prohibited Americans from being denied to vote on the basis of sex.

For context, it’s worth noting that this didn’t suddenly give every woman equal access to the ballot. Black women, especially in the South, continued to face discriminatory barriers to voting for decades afterwards and continued to fight for equal rights. 

Following this scene (and because this is Monster), the show then cuts to a trippy final sequence involving Aileen Wuornos.

But none of this is known to have happened in real life. While Lizzie really did live at Maplecroft and Emma really did leave the home in 1905, historical accounts of Lizzie’s later years don’t place her within the suffrage movement.

She did live long enough to see the 19th Amendment pass, before dying in 1927 at age 66 from pneumonia. 

There’s no evidence Bridget reunited with Lizzie and joined her in the suffrage movement either. 

Bridget’s whereabouts immediately after the trial are actually a little murky, with her grandniece by marriage, Carol Porter, telling The Herald News (via People) in 2012 that there was a gap of around 12 years.

She apparently resurfaced in Montana, where she married a man named John Sullivan in 1905 and remained until her death in 1948.

So, why does Monster turn Lizzie Borden into a suffragette?

Although the creators haven’t specifically explained why they made Lizzie a suffragette, it fits in with the overall theme of this season of Monster: female rage and the restrictions placed on women throughout history. 

Director and executive producer Max Winkler directly connected the story to the fact that women couldn’t vote at the time, explaining that the series looks at generations of women who were “put in cages” by the circumstances of their lives.

As he told Showbiz Junkies, “You know, we knew early on what we wanted the show to be about, which is it’s not just Lizzie Borden, but linking Lizzie Borden to these other women throughout history who were also put in cages and put upon, and what happens to people after years and years and years of oppression, which is almost always that they fight back. 

“And we knew early on how we were going to end the show, so the last image of the show is very, very connected to the first image of the show. For us, post-Lizzie’s trial, how we wanted to end the show was very much about our interpretation of Lizzie Borden and what she meant to history.”

Max continued, “But the story is about very much female rage. And you forget that – I don’t forget, but I think most people forget – that women couldn’t vote until 1920. That’s not that long ago. Couldn’t vote. 

“I think what the story asks post-Lizzie’s trial, what Ian [Brennan] kind of created in the breaking of that final episode with Ryan [Murphy], is how to most make Lizzie’s life mean something in the story we were trying to tell, which I think they did really well.”

Billie Lourd – who plays Emma – similarly pointed to voting rights when discussing the attitudes surrounding the real Lizzie’s trial.  

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, she explained, “No one could believe that a woman could do something like this. Women didn’t even have the right to vote. How could they kill someone?

“So it’s interesting to look at this through this lens of 1800s men who didn’t think women were capable of this, even though women are capable of anything – in good ways and bad ways. To see this in the court case and how that all shook out with a jury that was all men.”

So while Lizzie fighting for women’s right to vote might not be true to life, it makes sense when it comes to wrapping up the character arc Monster has created for her. 

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Featured image credit: Netflix