Woman in Film and History Draft

Are woman really equal to men? Throughout history woman have not been equal to men, especially in the early history of America. It wasn’t until the 1920’s that the fight for woman’s rights progressed anywhere. In the early 1920’s the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution was passed, this Amendment gave American woman some rights. Even though women were granted some rights at this time they were still viewed as inferior to their male counterparts. After watching the three movies Splendor in the Grass, Attack of the 50 Ft Woman, and Rear Window it became quite obvious that women during the late 1920’s and even up through the 1950’s were still oppressed and viewed as lower and dense. So even though women were granted some rights in the 1920’s, they continued to try to gain more rights up until about the mid- 1900’s. When suburbia started to boom in the 1950’s woman started to cling more to the securities they had than fight for rights, by doing so they started to fall more into the stereotypes that were set into place for them at the time.



The movie Splendor in the Grass is about the conventional role of woman in relationships and their conflicts with their sexual urges. The main female character in this movie is Deanie Loomis and the “love of her life” is Bud Stamper. As the movie opens we find Deanie and Bud in the front see of his car kissing. The scene continues and you see Bud attempting to remove Deanie’s clothes, she immediately refuses him telling him “I’m not ready”. Bud gets out of the car being quite frustrated with her; in the background behind him you can see a waterfall which is symbolic of female sexuality. Once she arrives home Deanie has a conversation with her mother about these sexual feeling that she had. Her mother tells her that it is not natural for a woman to feel this way; nice girls only have sex with their husband to give him pleasure and have children. As the movie continues Deanie is fighting with whether or not to follow the conventional ways of her mother, or follow her heart and give Bud what he wants. This was the same correlation that can be seen between the flapper generation and the women suffrage generation. The flappers expressed themselves very sexually; where as the women suffragists were more conservative and wanted equality to men. As the battle rages on in Deanie’s head between conservative or not Bud has gone off to find Juanita who seems to portray a flapper. Once Deanie find out about this she decides to go against the conventional stereotypes of woman at the time and more towards the security that Bud provides. To gain Bud’s security though she must give herself up to whatever he wishes, after she does though he rejects her saying that she is too nice of a girl to do that. This rejection causes Deanie’s security to crumble and send her into hysteria. By deciding to go with Bud she gave up the security of her parents by disregarding their conventional ways, and being rejected by Bud leaves her with no security at all. She views that she has nothing left so she tries to commit suicide off the waterfall from earlier. This act seems to symbolize that this tension inside of her because of her sexuality is going to lead her to her death. A group of men save her right before she plunges over the waterfall, she is then condemned to a mental hospital by her parents. I viewed the mental hospital as the reformation of her security; it was a place from where she was protected from the outside and able to find herself again. When she ends up finding a man to marry inside the hospital, showing that she had found a man who had security she could cling to. As we moved into Attack of the 50 Ft Woman you can also see this search of security throughout the movie.