Li Yi
Last week, I saw two films, And the Spring Comes and Mona Lisa Smile. The ideas of feminism and the concept of self-pursuit reflected in them made me have profound thinking.
First let me talk about And the Spring Comes. The film takes place in the 1980s. The protagonist is an elderly leftover woman named Wang Cailing.
Wang Cailing positioned herself like this: I’m as poor as a church and not good looking, my only blessing has been my voice. Without it I am nothing. She dreamed of being able to get into the Paris Opera, but she was repeatedly rejected by everyone. The desperate pain continued to erode her willpower. At this time, she was still dreaming about the fame and fortune brought by art. Fortunately, her view of love became more assertive. In the end, Wang Cailing left the opera without a second thought, lived on meat sales, and lived a single life with her adopted girl Wang Xiaofan.
Wang Cailing was born for both art and love. She is fighting alone in the pursuit of her artistic dream, relying on that distant noble dream. Art and love have always been inseparable and depreciated in her heart, although she has never been able to obtain these two things.
Throughout her first half of life, her vanity blinded her eyes. And she mistook the pursuit of art as a tool for a successful life. In the end, art did not redeem her barren soul, and she did not ask art for compensation. At the cost of losing the nourishment of enjoying art, the ordinary people's fireworks daily life was obtained.
The reality is always harsh. This literary youth wanted to flee. She fight until she was covered in bruises, but in vain. Fortunately, as a woman, she was not completely defeated. At least, not bowing to marriage is her last only dignity.
At the end of the movie is a dream for Wang Cailing. In the dream, she really sang in the Central Opera House. However, in reality, because of secular prejudice and public misunderstanding, Wang Cailing was unable to be respected, so that her self-pursuit as a woman was completely lost in the end. The result of fighting against such a realistic world is no result except a lot of injuries. So whether they are willing or unwilling, forced or proactive, all people on the lonely island must eventually return to shore.
Anyway, And the Spring Comes is a story that set the background in China. Women's self-development can tell a different story abroad in the United States. Mona Lisa Smile is one of those films that discusses whether women should pursue themselves or return to their families. And it really impresses me.
The film takes place in the United States in the 1950s. And I would never have been interested in the decades-long debate between China and the United States until I had seen these two films. However, after I watched them, I have to admit the fact that they are both similar and have differences.
At Wellesley College, a prestigious women's university, most of the students come from good families and have received an excellent education since childhood. But the college education does not teach them how to acquire knowledge of the subjects they are interested in, but defines their success as whether they will be a good and virtuous wife.
This view of masculinity may have been formed at the beginning of human society and became more deeply rooted with the agricultural and industrial revolutions. As the pillar of a family, men are expected to take care of money, while women are expected to take care of their husbands and children. This view was not unusual in those early days. And in this university, even the best students think in this way. They didn't even hesitate to try to carry on with this standpoint. Their goal is to marry a good man.
There's a dialogue in the film, “Dear Betty, I came to Wellesley because I wanted to make a difference. But to change for others...” Said by Catherine which is the heroine in this movie. As a maverick, she first want to change herself in a new environment. Instead of changing her, however, traditional ideas made her even more indignant. It also made her more insistent on maintaining her point of view. So she gradually changed her students. Until the end of the story, the most disobedient student Betty also published an article to thank her teacher. I think this is also a change of Catherine herself.
That may be why America is usually ahead of us in some ways. When a concept is contrary to the tradition that individuals will not understand or reject it. However, unlike the masses in And the Spring Comes, they will not deny this concept, but let it develop. They will let people observe and judge for themselves. In this way, what we lack is such an environment.
Women have the right to choose to get rid of marriage or devote themselves to the family. But the most important point is that marriage is not the shackles of women, but liberation. When women can be their own dignity, their lives will be truly thoroughly understood.
Women need to be their own dignities
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1394817902
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Re: Women need to be their own dignities
Hi Li Yi!
Through the protagonists of the two films, the essay concretely and coherently shows us the value of feminism and self pursuit. From the self struggle of the protagonist Wang Cailing's fate in And the spring comesand the subsequent explanation of the philosophy of "isolated island" in the film connotation, to the rise of the female independent consciousness represented by Catherine in Mona Lisa smile, and all of these accurately show us your feelings of watching the two movies. And in this essay, the two films are compared several times, which is very appealing and persuasive. You also greatly prepare to summarize the connotation of the article and to emphasize the theme of the essay again.
But in my opinion, the narration of Wang Cailing's character in And the spring comes and the introduction of the story content in Mona Lisa smile can be appropriately reduced. The introduction of social background in Mona Lisa smile can be slightly increased. The above is my personal opinion for reference only. Thank you very much for sharing this wonderful article.
Through the protagonists of the two films, the essay concretely and coherently shows us the value of feminism and self pursuit. From the self struggle of the protagonist Wang Cailing's fate in And the spring comesand the subsequent explanation of the philosophy of "isolated island" in the film connotation, to the rise of the female independent consciousness represented by Catherine in Mona Lisa smile, and all of these accurately show us your feelings of watching the two movies. And in this essay, the two films are compared several times, which is very appealing and persuasive. You also greatly prepare to summarize the connotation of the article and to emphasize the theme of the essay again.
But in my opinion, the narration of Wang Cailing's character in And the spring comes and the introduction of the story content in Mona Lisa smile can be appropriately reduced. The introduction of social background in Mona Lisa smile can be slightly increased. The above is my personal opinion for reference only. Thank you very much for sharing this wonderful article.
Re: Women need to be their own dignities
Hi Li Shiyao!
I'm glad you can point out the structure of our article, and I will fix it in the next time. Through the comparison of the articles, I realized that it is necessary to reduce the narrative of the movie plot. Thank you for your review.
I'm glad you can point out the structure of our article, and I will fix it in the next time. Through the comparison of the articles, I realized that it is necessary to reduce the narrative of the movie plot. Thank you for your review.
Re: Women need to be their own dignities
Hi Li Yi. Great job on this essay! I thought you did a great job overall. Your uses of descriptive adjective and your word choice was fitting for this essay. I also enjoyed the style of writing that you chose to use. Both summaries of the essays were great and encompassed all the main points of the movies. However, I noticed that most of the essay was just a summary of the movie. I wished you elaborated on your topic sentence for each movie. But overall it was a great essay. I wish you the best with your future endeavors! 
Sincerely,
Alvin Dastine
Sincerely,
Alvin Dastine
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1394817902
- Posts: 12
- Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 2:03 pm
Re: Women need to be their own dignities
Looking forward to your next writing! : D
Re: Women need to be their own dignities
Hello Li Yi,
I enjoyed reading your essay. There are some phrases that make it difficult to understand what you mean by that. You could explain what "leftover woman" means in terms of describing Cailing. You also say that she is as poor as a church. That phrasing is a little awkward. Churches are generally well funded. If Cailing is describing herself like this then you may include parentheses so it sounds like this is a sentence from her. You made a very good point about her being blinded by vanity. I think you can expand on that and it will add to your paper especially how you describe her soul as barren. That can be a play on words. She is not barren meaning unable to have children, but she is unable to find a man to have a child with, which causes her to adopt ultimately.
I enjoyed reading your essay. There are some phrases that make it difficult to understand what you mean by that. You could explain what "leftover woman" means in terms of describing Cailing. You also say that she is as poor as a church. That phrasing is a little awkward. Churches are generally well funded. If Cailing is describing herself like this then you may include parentheses so it sounds like this is a sentence from her. You made a very good point about her being blinded by vanity. I think you can expand on that and it will add to your paper especially how you describe her soul as barren. That can be a play on words. She is not barren meaning unable to have children, but she is unable to find a man to have a child with, which causes her to adopt ultimately.
Re: Women need to be their own dignities
Thank you for your review. Based on your comment, I rethought the proportion of the plot summary and my understanding in this movie review. I will correct it the next time. Thanks, Alvinakd5439 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 19, 2020 8:33 pm Hi Li Yi. Great job on this essay! I thought you did a great job overall. Your uses of descriptive adjective and your word choice was fitting for this essay. I also enjoyed the style of writing that you chose to use. Both summaries of the essays were great and encompassed all the main points of the movies. However, I noticed that most of the essay was just a summary of the movie. I wished you elaborated on your topic sentence for each movie. But overall it was a great essay. I wish you the best with your future endeavors!
Sincerely,
Alvin Dastine
Re: Women need to be their own dignities
Hi, Lucero! Thank you for your review. Based on your comment, I understand my deficiencies in wording. First, I am used to translating nouns in Chinese directly into English. This is not appropriate in different cultural backgrounds. My understanding of "leftover women" is a very old woman who is not married. Secondly, regarding Wang Cailing's position on herself, I directly quoted her original words in the movie, but forgot to add appropriate quotation marks. In addition, until the beautiful female neighbor was also abandoned by her husband, Wang Cailing still had longings for love and vanity. This can be seen when she went to the marriage agency, she asked to date a man with a good job. Therefore, according to my understanding, she finally chose to adopt a child ,not because she had no choice. After giving up self-pity and unwillingness, giving up the desire for love and vanity, she finally redeemed herself. Abandoning opera, selling meat, raising children, and supporting her parents, she finally found an ordinary way to allow herself to survive in this unpleasant world. (The child's name, Wang Xiaofan, means ordinary. This means that Wang Cailing's expectations for life have finally changed.)Thank you for pointing out my problems and giving some suggestions, I will correct it in the next time.lkr5215 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 20, 2020 5:57 pm Hello Li Yi,
I enjoyed reading your essay. There are some phrases that make it difficult to understand what you mean by that. You could explain what "leftover woman" means in terms of describing Cailing. You also say that she is as poor as a church. That phrasing is a little awkward. Churches are generally well funded. If Cailing is describing herself like this then you may include parentheses so it sounds like this is a sentence from her. You made a very good point about her being blinded by vanity. I think you can expand on that and it will add to your paper especially how you describe her soul as barren. That can be a play on words. She is not barren meaning unable to have children, but she is unable to find a man to have a child with, which causes her to adopt ultimately.
Re: Women need to be their own dignities
Looking forward to your next writing too!
Re: Women need to be their own dignities
Modified essay：
Women need to be their own dignities
Li Yi and Xu Yiheng
Last week, I saw two films, And the Spring Comes and Mona Lisa Smile. The ideas of feminism and the concept of self-pursuit reflected in them made me have profound thinking.
First let me talk about And the Spring Comes. The film takes place in the 1980s. The protagonist is an elderly leftover woman (which hasn’t married yet) named Wang Cailing.
Wang Cailing positioned herself like this: I’m as poor as a church and not good looking, my only blessing has been my voice. Without it I am nothing. She dreamed of being able to get into the Paris Opera, but she was repeatedly rejected by everyone. The desperate pain continued to erode her willpower. At this time, she was still dreaming about the fame and fortune brought by art. Fortunately, her view of love became more assertive. In the end, Wang Cailing left the opera without a second thought, lived on meat sales, and lived a single life with her adopted girl Wang Xiaofan.
Wang Cailing was born for both art and love. She is fighting alone in the pursuit of her artistic dream, relying on that distant noble dream. Art and love have always been inseparable and depreciated in her heart, although she has never been able to obtain these two things.
Throughout her first half of life, her vanity blinded her eyes. And she mistook the pursuit of art as a tool for a successful life. In the end, art did not redeem her barren soul, and she did not ask art for compensation. At the cost of losing the nourishment of enjoying art, the ordinary people's fireworks daily life was obtained.
The reality is always harsh. This literary youth wanted to flee. She fight until she was covered in bruises, but in vain. Fortunately, as a woman, she was not completely defeated. At least, not bowing to marriage is her last only dignity.
At the end of the movie is a dream for Wang Cailing. In the dream, she really sang in the Central Opera House. However, in reality, because of secular prejudice and public misunderstanding, Wang Cailing was unable to be respected, so that her self-pursuit as a woman was completely lost in the end. The result of fighting against such a realistic world is no result except a lot of injuries. So whether they are willing or unwilling, forced or proactive, all people on the lonely island must eventually return to shore.
And the Spring Comes’s pure-heartedness, kind-hearted, unhurried perfectly make contrast to the infertility, hypocrisy, malevolence, fickleness of that generation. And the Spring Comes portrayed a group of small city’s "artistic youth" trapped in the art cage, and it let me be full of respect.
Anyway, And the Spring Comes is a story that set the background in China. Women's self-development can tell a different story abroad in the United States. Mona Lisa Smile is one of those films that discusses whether women should pursue themselves or return to their families. And it really impresses me.
The film takes place in the United States in the 1950s. In that traditional patriarchal society of that era, men had an absolute speaking rights. They want women to be good images for them to appreciate and serve them. I would never have been interested in the decades-long debate between China and the United States until I had seen these two films. However, after I watched them, I have to admit the fact that they are both similar and have differences.
At Wellesley College, a prestigious women's university, most of the students come from good families and have received an excellent education since childhood. But the college education does not teach them how to acquire knowledge of the subjects they are interested in, but defines their success as whether they will be a good and virtuous wife. The teachers teach students about future marriages, don't encourage them to take the initiative to acquire knowledge and don't pay much attention to developing their psychological qualities.
This view of masculinity may have been formed at the beginning of human society and became more deeply rooted with the agricultural and industrial revolutions. As the pillar of a family, men are expected to take care of money, while women are expected to take care of their husbands and children. This view was not unusual in those early days. And in this university, even the best students think in this way. They didn't even hesitate to try to carry on with this standpoint. Their goal is to marry a good man.
There's a dialogue in the film, “Dear Betty, I came to Wellesley because I wanted to make a difference. But to change for others...” Said by Catherine which is the heroine in this movie. As a maverick, she first want to change herself in a new environment. Instead of changing her, however, traditional ideas made her even more indignant. It also made her more insistent on maintaining her point of view. So she gradually changed her students. Until the end of the story, the most disobedient student Betty also published an article to thank her teacher. I think this is also a change of Catherine herself. The teacher-student relationship between them is delicate and pleasant. This relationship is as mysterious as the “Mona Lisa's smile” and makes people yearn and look forward to it.
That may be why America is usually ahead of us in some ways. When a concept is contrary to the tradition that individuals will not understand or reject it. However, unlike the masses in And the Spring Comes, they will not deny this concept, but let it develop. They will let people observe and judge for themselves. In this way, what we lack is such an environment.
In these two films, I saw different female images, different personality characteristics and different individuality charm. Women have the right to choose to get rid of marriage or devote themselves to the family. But the most important point is that marriage is not the shackles of women, but liberation. When women can be their own dignity, their lives will be truly thoroughly understood.
Women need to be their own dignities
Li Yi and Xu Yiheng
Last week, I saw two films, And the Spring Comes and Mona Lisa Smile. The ideas of feminism and the concept of self-pursuit reflected in them made me have profound thinking.
First let me talk about And the Spring Comes. The film takes place in the 1980s. The protagonist is an elderly leftover woman (which hasn’t married yet) named Wang Cailing.
Wang Cailing positioned herself like this: I’m as poor as a church and not good looking, my only blessing has been my voice. Without it I am nothing. She dreamed of being able to get into the Paris Opera, but she was repeatedly rejected by everyone. The desperate pain continued to erode her willpower. At this time, she was still dreaming about the fame and fortune brought by art. Fortunately, her view of love became more assertive. In the end, Wang Cailing left the opera without a second thought, lived on meat sales, and lived a single life with her adopted girl Wang Xiaofan.
Wang Cailing was born for both art and love. She is fighting alone in the pursuit of her artistic dream, relying on that distant noble dream. Art and love have always been inseparable and depreciated in her heart, although she has never been able to obtain these two things.
Throughout her first half of life, her vanity blinded her eyes. And she mistook the pursuit of art as a tool for a successful life. In the end, art did not redeem her barren soul, and she did not ask art for compensation. At the cost of losing the nourishment of enjoying art, the ordinary people's fireworks daily life was obtained.
The reality is always harsh. This literary youth wanted to flee. She fight until she was covered in bruises, but in vain. Fortunately, as a woman, she was not completely defeated. At least, not bowing to marriage is her last only dignity.
At the end of the movie is a dream for Wang Cailing. In the dream, she really sang in the Central Opera House. However, in reality, because of secular prejudice and public misunderstanding, Wang Cailing was unable to be respected, so that her self-pursuit as a woman was completely lost in the end. The result of fighting against such a realistic world is no result except a lot of injuries. So whether they are willing or unwilling, forced or proactive, all people on the lonely island must eventually return to shore.
And the Spring Comes’s pure-heartedness, kind-hearted, unhurried perfectly make contrast to the infertility, hypocrisy, malevolence, fickleness of that generation. And the Spring Comes portrayed a group of small city’s "artistic youth" trapped in the art cage, and it let me be full of respect.
Anyway, And the Spring Comes is a story that set the background in China. Women's self-development can tell a different story abroad in the United States. Mona Lisa Smile is one of those films that discusses whether women should pursue themselves or return to their families. And it really impresses me.
The film takes place in the United States in the 1950s. In that traditional patriarchal society of that era, men had an absolute speaking rights. They want women to be good images for them to appreciate and serve them. I would never have been interested in the decades-long debate between China and the United States until I had seen these two films. However, after I watched them, I have to admit the fact that they are both similar and have differences.
At Wellesley College, a prestigious women's university, most of the students come from good families and have received an excellent education since childhood. But the college education does not teach them how to acquire knowledge of the subjects they are interested in, but defines their success as whether they will be a good and virtuous wife. The teachers teach students about future marriages, don't encourage them to take the initiative to acquire knowledge and don't pay much attention to developing their psychological qualities.
This view of masculinity may have been formed at the beginning of human society and became more deeply rooted with the agricultural and industrial revolutions. As the pillar of a family, men are expected to take care of money, while women are expected to take care of their husbands and children. This view was not unusual in those early days. And in this university, even the best students think in this way. They didn't even hesitate to try to carry on with this standpoint. Their goal is to marry a good man.
There's a dialogue in the film, “Dear Betty, I came to Wellesley because I wanted to make a difference. But to change for others...” Said by Catherine which is the heroine in this movie. As a maverick, she first want to change herself in a new environment. Instead of changing her, however, traditional ideas made her even more indignant. It also made her more insistent on maintaining her point of view. So she gradually changed her students. Until the end of the story, the most disobedient student Betty also published an article to thank her teacher. I think this is also a change of Catherine herself. The teacher-student relationship between them is delicate and pleasant. This relationship is as mysterious as the “Mona Lisa's smile” and makes people yearn and look forward to it.
That may be why America is usually ahead of us in some ways. When a concept is contrary to the tradition that individuals will not understand or reject it. However, unlike the masses in And the Spring Comes, they will not deny this concept, but let it develop. They will let people observe and judge for themselves. In this way, what we lack is such an environment.
In these two films, I saw different female images, different personality characteristics and different individuality charm. Women have the right to choose to get rid of marriage or devote themselves to the family. But the most important point is that marriage is not the shackles of women, but liberation. When women can be their own dignity, their lives will be truly thoroughly understood.