To quote amazon.com:
…Katherine Watson (Roberts), a bohemian, feminist art historian from California, shows up as an instructor at Wellesley in 1953, when the college is still an upper-class breeding ground for dutiful young wives. Stirring the place up, Katherine involves herself in the lives of her students – a bitch (Dunst), a floozy (Gyllenhaal), and a superior brain determined to marry right away (Stiles).
The movie made me laugh because I just can’t believe that women’s colleges were really like that in the 1950s. The scene with Harden teaching her students how to give a dinner party for her husband’s boss and wife had me laughing out loud at the absurdity. But I suppose it WAS that way back then. I mean, I can’t be the only one that remembers the old joke about “What’s your major?” “I’m getting my MRS degree.”
Fortunately the movie wasn’t too schmaltzy or cloying, and I really liked it. It helped that the cast was so highly talented and good at what they do. Add in convincing writing and a wonderful scenic backdrop and it’s a movie worth seeing.
3 1/2 books read while simultaneously vacuuming out of five.
Doesn’t seem absurd to me at all ~ too bad more women these days come out of college with little practical sense. HELLO, that’s why they come to me for cooking, table setting and help with proper manners ~ they didn’t get it in school or at home.
Are you kidding? There’s a huge difference between going to college and deciding to get married after graduation and be an at-home wife/mother. It’s another thing all together to go to college *specifically to find a husband*. And it seems to me that in the 1950s the women (as depicted in this movie) were simply going to college to be Good Wives and for no other reason. What a waste of money…
I would say that the movie gave you the wrong impression. Certainly it was the hope of all of us at college that upon graduation we would then get married, some of us sooner than others. 🙂 In the 50’s , I don’t think the women went to college to learn to be better wives, it was to receive a broader education, in all areas, than what one could receive in just 12 yrs of schooling. They got pretty good instruction on being wives and homemakers at home with the traditional 50’s moms. It’s too bad the instruction on being better wives and homemakers isn’t taught much anymore, either in home or in college.