The film "Mona Lisa Smile" tells the story of an open-minded Catherine who came to Wesleyan Women's College to teach art history. This school follows and adheres to the old and rotten system, and the students who study there also think that they go to this university to better marry. And Catherine couldn't accept that the students here would be fettered by marriage in the future and could not bravely pursue their own ideals, so she tried to challenge this stereotype.
The story takes place in the United States in 1953. America was in a time of great change at the time. Even though the status of women has been significantly improved, in some areas, women's self-awareness and awareness of rights protection have not been significantly changed. Wesleyan Girls' School is a typical example.
The students who were able to study at Wesleyan Girls' School were from the aristocracy. They have received good higher education and have a superior family environment. They are arrogant, arrogant, have a great sense of self-confidence and superiority, and more importantly, they are still young.
Katherine graduated from Berkeley University, which is full of atmosphere. She has an avant-garde thinking and an open personality. When she came to Wesleyan, a rigid, clichéd place, she couldn't stand the school's confinement of youthful ideals. Women who study here must study and prepare for future marriage. Born to be such a person, every girl desperately wants to find the other half during this time, and then silently endure and even endure the ordeal of marriage.
Betty plays an important role in it. She is the most resistant among the students, but in the end, she is also the one who reveres Catherine the most. Her identity is like the party that sticks to tradition and opposes changing it, and she is always fighting against Katherine. She is a representative of being imprisoned by traditional ideas of decay.
Girls at that time were afraid to openly discuss gender issues. Another student, Li Wei, who is extremely concerned and open-minded about sex, is also the first girl to accept Catherine, and always finds the other half she wants in love. She will not tie herself up because of love, even if the person she likes already likes someone, she will finally be relieved.
However, although Betty strictly adhered to all traditions, and published articles satirizing those students who behaved dissolutely, and even criticized Katherine's teaching methods and ideas with fierce words. What makes Catherine most indignant and helpless is the sentence "The roles you were born to be fill", we were born to be like that, we were born to follow that trajectory of life, we have no reason to change .
But later, Betty accepted the arrangement of the family and what he thought was a logical marriage in name only. Her husband doesn't value her, and only has work in his heart. Even if it seems that she has everything that others don't have, she is lonely in her heart. She wanted to resist this kind of marriage, but her mother, who only paid attention to the so-called virtues of women in the family, and herself, who dared not say "no", made her hesitate to give up this failed marriage. It can be seen how powerless she is to her failed marriage by how much she resists Catherine.
In the end, she figured it out. He couldn't waste his life because of a flashy marriage. He didn't want to give up the life he wanted again and again because of the strong traditional forces. So in the end, she explained her thoughts to her mother and insisted on it. Determination to want a divorce. In fact, Betty was the first student who really dared to resist the stereotypes and persevered in the play, and she also overthrew the "people who were born to be" as she originally said.
Sometimes I feel like I was born with fate, I feel that I must be that kind of person because of some external constraints. For example, our own background, the arrangements of our parents, and the general environment we live in, these seem to be like shackles that imprison us, and we have never even thought about getting rid of them since we were born, and we obey them naturally and numbly.
Katherine is desperate to change Wesleyan's status quo, and it affects every one of her students. Her free and independent personality has deeply influenced and changed Wesley, who sticks to stereotypes. She is great. All progress requires a person who dares to say "No!" and dare to resist, and the emergence of Catherine has opened up a brighter road for women to be independent in their thoughts and personalities, and not be fettered by marriage.
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