In today's China, from the perspective of mainstream thinking, "leftover women" has become a social problem, and parents even think absurdly that they would rather have a divorced daughter than an unmarried daughter of school age. If a woman is not married at the age of 30, no matter how good the job or how high his income is, she will be labeled as a "loser". On the contrary, a female graduate who has just graduated with a master's degree has a son and is pregnant with a daughter. Her husband is rich and handsome, and she is a "winner in life" regardless of whether she has a job or not. This is the status quo in China. It seems that "married" means that you have made at least one step, while unmarried of the right age is the one vote against.
"Smile of the Mona Lisa" takes 1953 as the background of the era. After the end of World War II, the United States has experienced more than 10 years of development and the economy has recovered. Wesley Women’s University, nominally teaches women’s knowledge, but actually cultivates wives for men who stay at home and teach children. Female students are proud of being "married." It is very common for them to get married during school. The biggest dream of unmarried students is to be favored by boys before graduation and successfully enter the palace of marriage.
Catherine's ideal is to come to Wesley Women's University to teach, and she hopes to make a difference. It is said that many teachers in her art history teaching position have changed, and no one is willing to teach. In the first class, she planned to speak according to the content of the textbook. As a result, all the students memorized all the content of the textbook before the class. She was very embarrassed. The most eloquent Betty even said, if you have nothing to teach, we would rather teach ourselves. For an ambitious and ambitious new teacher, how much a blow to her will be if she fails her first assignment.
In the second class, she chose a work that was not on the textbook, and asked the students to think about the quality of the work and the reasons for it. She also took out the paintings praised by her mother when she was a child and a piece of art taken by a famous photographer for her mother. Photographs, let students discuss what is art. In the eyes of her mother, her paintings are the greatest works in the world, but they may seem ordinary to outsiders. Mother's art portrait is just a photo, because it was taken by a famous photographer, it can be called a work of art. Art is often determined by a few people.
Her subsequent courses are all developed around the same purpose, which is to let students learn to think independently. She typed a C on one of Joan's assignments, who always took an A, because she copied the opinions of a famous artist instead of the opinions summarized by herself. She checked the files of each student, trying to learn more about them and provide help. She told Joan, who wanted to go to Yale to study law, that she could have both family and career, and she didn't have to give up her dream of being a lawyer for marriage. She also helped her fill out the application form. When Joan was admitted and chose to give up, she even went to her home to persuade her to go to Yale for further study, until Joan told her that she only wanted to stay at home after getting married and make contributions to the family, and emphasized that this was what she wanted to do most. Only then did she give up to continue to persuade, and expressed respect and blessings.
Betty, who has been against Catherine, attacked her with editorials, saying that she challenged traditional education in order to be famous. The school principal and board members also tried their best to prevent her from having an impact on the students' ideological independence, and threatened her failure to pass the assessment, hoping that she would talk less about modern art. Although the number of students enrolled in the course she taught in the second semester broke the highest record in history, the school imposed strict restrictions on the content of her lectures and required her to hand in lecture notes to ensure that the lecture content did not affect traditional education. threat. Obviously, going on such a course is meaningless.
In the last class, she gave a speech with passion and indignation using female advertisement pictures, expressing all her inner thoughts. Then she said, I give up, you won. After she finished speaking, all the students were lost in thought, including Betty. Betty had a wedding while she was in school, but the marriage did not last long before her husband had an affair, and her mother refused to agree to her divorce on the grounds that the family ugliness should not be publicized. She pointed to Leonardo’s "Smile of the Mona Lisa" and said, "Look at her smiling, but this is just appearance. Who knows whether she is happy or not?" Regardless of her mother's obstruction, she resolutely divorced, ready to go to Yale to study law. Before she left, she used another editorial to make a fair assessment of Catherine.
In 1953, American feminism was still in its infancy, and it took 60 years to develop into what it is today. In China now, feminism is also struggling with the so-called mainstream thinking. I don’t know whether it will become what the United States is now in a few decades.
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