Mona Lisa Smile is a film based in the 1950's at Wellsley College, a institution for higher learning for women in that time period. The only difference between the women today (mostly) and the women, in this movie, is that they were in it solely for their MRS degrees. More often than not, the young ladies who attended Wellsley College in this movie would end up married and on their way to having children before they even got close to graduation. Women in this time period were only good for one thing and that was to become someone's wife and someone else's mother. No one was concerned with the academic development of these women. It is my personal belief that these women were enrolled in college just because they had the money from their parents backing them and so they could hold good dinner conversation with their husband's bosses and bosses' wives. The film follows the story of five different women and how their paths at this college changed each other's lives. Katherine Watson (played by movie vet Julia Roberts) was a very liberal and "subversive" instructor from California who couldn't understand why a woman would want to limit herself to just being known as someone's wife. While most of the girls found her interesting, there was one girl who opposed her every step of the way. Betty Warren, portrayed by Kirsten Dunst, was one of the women that believed that she was completely justified in her choices to become engaged and later marry someone, putting her betrothed above her education, by skipping classes and fighting Katherine Watson's teachings. After seeing how Wellsley was teaching these girl's to act, Professor Watson used her lectures to show the girls that there were other methods out there and they did indeed have choices outside of becoming someone's (in)significant other.
The overall theme of this movie had to do with change. But the change was different for each of the main characters. In Joan Brandwyn's case (Julia Stiles), she was a more progressive student, who wanted the best of both worlds. She wanted the education (going to law school) and she wanted the husband and children. In the end, she realized that although she wanted both, she wasn't willing to sacrifice her future family by being selfish. While I don't exactly understand her choice, I admire her for being so selfless. In Giselle Levy's situation (Maggie Gyllenhaal), she was the promiscuous student that everyone talked about and who had a ongoing affair with one of her professors. She was confident in her sexuality and even used taboo birth control pills openly. I think that by the end of her experience with Katherine Watson, she realized that she was better than random sexual relationships with men that didn't care about her. For Connie Baker (Ginnifer Goodwin), she struggled with body and confidence issues and her situation wasn't helped by some of her friends and her relationship with men. By the end of the movie, she transformed into a much more confident woman who didn't need the approval of her friends or any man to make her happy, although she got the guy at the end. Betty Warren is a very difficult case. She was influenced by her mother from a young age to act a certain way, to look a certain way, and she took that to a very extreme level. She was constanly angry and trying to smash the happiness of others because deep down she wasn't happy with herself. I think the kicker was that when her husband cheated on her, publicly, her mother told her to suck it up and deal with it like a married woman, basically ignoring his indiscretions. Ultimately she chose her happiness over keeping up appearances and that all had to do with one woman. Katherine Watson, from the very start, came in with a mind to change the mind's of those women right away without taking into account their feelings at all. She wanted to change their minds about becoming housewives. She wanted them to see that there was a way to get both, or if they wanted just to have an education, it was okay to do that too. At the end, she realized that not only couldn't she change those women, if they were set in their ways, but she couldn't change her own mind about her beliefs, and so she departed from Wellsley.
I love the movie Mona Lisa Smile. It is just such an uplifting movie and gives a good message and lesson about the choices that women are forced to make even to this day. It was interesting to watch from an academic perspective and really analyze the women and their issues, and how it affected their body images.
No comments:
Post a Comment