A couple of weeks ago, I went to the library to check out more DVDs because I wanted to watch some more movies. I had seen clips of the movie Mona Lisa Smile, which came out when I was young, but I cannot remember if I had watched the entire movie before. I love Julia Roberts and Kirsten Dunst, so I was really excited when I first saw the trailer as a kid. However, I didn’t actually watch the full movie until last night. It was truly a beautiful film, and I really love the acting in the movie.
The movie takes place in the 1950s at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Wellesley is one of the Seven Sisters colleges, a group of seven historically women’s colleges in the United States. Katherine Watson moves from California to become a professor of art history at Wellesley, and she thinks that the students know nothing about art and are going to be learning something new each day. However, when she puts up the images of paintings on her overhead, the students know the name of every painting that she puts up because they read the entire art history textbook already. Katherine is flabbergasted and has no idea what to do because these students made her look stupid, and she wonders if she is cut out for this job at Wellesley because clearly her students know everything, so why do they need a professor to educate them on stuff they already know? The administration at Wellesley doubt that Katherine has what it takes to be a professor at the college, but over time, Katherine starts to find creative ways to engage her students and gets to know them more. Even though she has a boyfriend back in California, she falls in love with a charming professor named Bill Dunbar, who is rumored to be sleeping with his students, one of them being Giselle Levy, who is in Katherine’s art class and has untraditional attitudes towards marriage and womanhood. Elizabeth “Betty” Warren, another student in Ms. Watson’s class, challenges Ms. Watson and acts like she is superior to her because while Ms. Watson is a single unmarried older woman, Betty is a firm believer in being a proper wife dedicated to the household and her husband. Betty writes a column for the Wellesley school newsletter reprimanding anyone on the staff who espouses unconventional attitudes about femininity and doesn’t uphold conservative ideas of marriage and family. Betty constantly makes disparaging comments about the other girls, and even gets the school nurse, Amanda Armstrong, fired for offering contraception to the student body by writing about it in the newsletter. Even though Betty is mean, we actually find out later on in the movie that her mother is controlling and restricts Betty from living her life the way she wants to.
Connie is another student in Ms. Watson’s art class, and I loved her character because like me, she plays the cello. Betty tells Connie that she will never find a husband or anyone to fall in love with her, but Betty meets a young man named Charlie, who loves her for who she is. However, while they are at the pool, Betty tells Connie that Charlie is getting engaged to another woman and doesn’t actually love Connie. When Charlie finds Connie at another dance later in the movie, he tries to run after her and explain himself, but Connie doesn’t want to hear any of it. Betty tries to cheer up Connie and tell her that Charlie wasn’t meant for her, but Connie sees through Betty’s lies and tells Betty that she lied to her. Betty realizes that she isn’t going to have the happy fairytale marriage she envisioned having with Spencer, because one evening Giselle spies Spencer kissing another woman and I’m guessing Betty soon has to find out that her fiancé was cheating on her. What really bugged me was when Betty’s mom tells her that she can make it work and that Spencer will somehow feel sorry for what he did and stay committed to Betty, but that got me thinking, Well, this may not be the last time he cheats on her.
I think that is why I am kind of glad I watched this show called The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel a few years before watching Mona Lisa Smile, because in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the protagonist finds her own path in life and bucks traditional conventions for married women. In the first episode of the show, Miriam Maisel is a typical 1950s housewife who lives with her parents and takes care of her husband, Joel, and their two kids, Ethan and Esther. While Miriam is cooking the brisket, Joel is telling the same dull jokes and recycling the same boring standup routines about Abraham Lincoln at a comedy club called The Gaslight in Greenwich Village. However, everything changes on the evening of Yom Kippur when Miriam finds out that Joel was having an affair with his secretary, Penny. They separate and Miriam drinks an entire bottle of kosher red wine and delivers an impromptu, foul-mouthed monologue that evening at the Gaslight, skewering her now ex-husband for cheating on her and flashing her breasts to the audience, prompting the police to arrest her. Susie Myerson, who runs the Gaslight club, at first doesn’t see any potential in Miriam when she first meets her, but after seeing Miriam perform, she sees that Miriam is actually pretty funny (and, frankly, much funnier than her ex-husband). Miriam sneaks off after putting her kids to sleep to perform at the Gaslight under the pseudonym Amanda Gleason and even gets a day job at a department store called B. Altman to support herself financially. Her parents, Rose and Abe, are confused as to why she seems so different, so much more independent than before, and later on in the show she confesses to them (and Joel’s parents) that she is a comedian. Rose is disappointed that Miriam won’t just be a good wife who stays at home and takes care of the kids and is upset when she finds out that Miriam was sneaking off behind her back telling foul-mouthed jokes at a comedy club when she should have been making the brisket and changing her kids’ diapers. Even though she doesn’t like the person Miriam is becoming, Miriam realizes that at some point she has to live the life she wants to, otherwise she is going to go her entire life seeking approval from her parents and other people who don’t actually want her to live life as an independent young woman. Even though she gives up a life of domesticity for stand-up comedy, Midge learns to become her own person and that even though she has to deal with a lot of sexism and misogyny in the male-dominated world of comedy, she is pursuing a dream she could have never envisioned for herself and that is true happiness for her. Of course, she still loves Joel, and he sticks up for her through thick and thin, but even he realizes that she is happy pursuing her own life outside of being married to him.
In Mona Lisa Smile, Katherine is frustrated that the women who go to Wellesley are getting this well-rounded and elite education so that they can get married and have children (which of course isn’t a bad thing. Maybe I want to get married and have kids one day even though I’m currently not sure if I want to or not.) One of her students, Joan Brandwyn, wants to go to Yale for law school, but she is conflicted about whether she can do that and be a wife at the same time. Even though Katherine tells her that she can do both, Joan believes that isn’t a possibility. Katherine slips Joan an application to apply to Yale during class and Joan feels encouraged, but when she tells Betty that she is going to Yale, instead of celebrating Joan’s accomplishment, Betty chastises her and tells her that she will be getting married, NOT going to law school, because if, God forbid, Joan gets a law degree and becomes this kick-ass lawyer, then she will absolutely RUIN her chances at finding a husband and will just spend her life being a strong, independent “childless cat lady” (J.D. Vance’s words, not Betty’s). However, after Betty finds out that Spencer cheated on her, she realizes that she doesn’t want to live her life married to a scumbag, and she ends up moving into an apartment with Giselle and leaving her mother’s house because her mother doesn’t actually care about her daughter’s happiness.
I did have to reflect on my attitude towards domesticity at some point in the movie, though, and maybe I was being too judgmental towards Joan. When they are at a dance, Katherine meets Joan’s husband, and he tells her that he got into Penn State. When she asks if Joan is still going to Yale, Joan’s husband tells her that Joan won’t be going to Yale and will instead get married and move to Philadelphia to be with him while he gets his degree and she comes home every day to have dinner on the table for him by 5 o’clock. When Katherine approaches Joan about this, Joan assures her that just because she wants to get married and have a family doesn’t mean she is any less smart or accomplished. Even though this was hard for me to hear, too, it made me think, Hey, yeah, maybe I am being too judgmental about Joan deciding to get married instead of going to law school. Not going to law school didn’t make her any less smart or capable, and maybe she was happier getting married and having a family. It reminded me of the 2019 remake of Little Women (directed by Greta Gerwig) because Jo (Saoirse Ronan) is this fierce, independent young woman who wants to become an author and doesn’t want to get married. Her sisters, however, are growing up and do want to get married and have a family. Jo is frustrated and sad that her sisters are all moving out and having families and marriages, and even her friend, Laurie (Timothee Chalamet), gets married to Jo’s sister Amy (Florence Pugh) and has children with her. However, Jo realizes that she has her own path in life and that if she spends her life comparing her life to her sisters, she is going to be unfulfilled and unhappy, so she pursues her writing career and even meets a man who encourages her to pursue her dreams. I’m actually glad she didn’t end up with Laurie, because I don’t think Laurie would have supported her career or her desire to be an independent young woman. In The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Miriam’s ex-husband, Joel, falls in love with a Chinese American woman named Mei, and after they have sex, she finds out that she is pregnant with his child. At first, Joel is worried that his parents, who are white American Jews, will get angry with him for having an interracial relationship with an Asian American woman, but Joel’s father tells him that it’s not the fact that she is Chinese that they don’t approve of, it’s that she is not Jewish, and he tells her that in order for her and Joel to get married, she has to convert to Judaism. However, Mei ends up bailing out of this whole situation by dumping Joel and getting an abortion, telling him that she wants to go to medical school to become a doctor and she can’t do that and be married to Joel at the same time. Honestly, I was happy that Mei left to become a doctor and not settle down with Joel, because I’m sure she would have regretted not following her dream of becoming a doctor. And that is Katherine tries to tell Joan, that she will regret it for the rest of her life if she gets married instead of pursuing her law degree at Yale. But Joan reminds Katherine that she told Joan that she could do anything she wanted with her degree and her life, and getting married and having a family is something that Joan truly wants. And honestly, I don’t say all this to shit on women who are raising kids whether or not they are employed or unemployed. I REALLY don’t want to do that. Raising kids and being a mom is a fucking full-time JOB for a lot of women. So that’s why I am glad I have been watching different things, reading different things, to get people’s perspectives on motherhood and womanhood in general. Because the last thing I want to do is make any women (and people) with children feel like utter shit for doing what they do, and they have all the respect from me.
Now that I am older, this movie hits a lot harder because I am at the age when my peers are getting married and having families with each other, and I am still a childless “cat lady” with no cats (even though I want to have one, I don’t want my mom sneezing around the house if I suddenly get a heart and bring home a stray abandoned tabby named Muffin that I found in the alley. I definitely couldn’t bring Muffin home if she was preggo with kittens, either, because that would be double the allergies. Maybe I will be an actual cat lady in my next lifetime, just not this one.) I recently watched a TED Talk by this woman named Bella DePaulo, who writes about the joys of singlehood and the stigma that single people have to deal with every day. It was very reassuring and reminded my young ass that even if my old ass remains single and unmarried, I can still live a happy fulfilling life. I also just finished reading her book, Single at Heart, which talks about the stigma that single unmarried people deal with from society and how single people like me can live their best lives. Like I said, I might find someone who is so sexy and fine that I want to say, “Damn, I want to jump your bones AND get married to you.” But for now, little old possibly asexual me hasn’t found that person yet. And frankly, even though I have a crush on someone, I probably should just focus on taking care of myself rather than worrying too much about finding a date. Not that dating is bad. As someone with minimal dating experience, I am sure it is fun to go on dates with people. But right now, my mental health isn’t great, and I am really trying to take care of myself both physically and mentally.
The Arts Are Life 