ACROSS4SEAS.COM

Steven Toomey

I would like to explore the concept of marriage in the films Mona Lisa Smile 2003 and And the Spring Comes 2007 in relation to women’s empowerment and mobility. Marriage acts in similar ways in both films as a socially valued institution that universally inhibits the movement of characters whose life experiences are radically different. In China and the U.S., tradition is a primary social force encouraging women to get married, but in the film Mona Lisa Smile we also see advertising and market forces as factors pushing women towards marriage as well. In both films marriage is depicted as holding back people from pursuing their dreams despite the significantly different physical, social, and economic environments that the characters occupy.

The characters in the film Mona Lisa Smile exist in the so-called golden age of 1950s America. The all-female student body at the prestigious Wellesley college is a group of upper class Caucasian aristocrats whose parents send them to college not to get an education and a diploma but to get married. The character Joan Brandwyn played by actress Julia Stiles exemplifies this concept. When art history professor Katherine Watson, played by actress Julia Roberts, asks her student Joan what her major is, Joan tells Katherine she is majoring in pre-law. Katherine then asks Joan what law school she plans on attending and it is made clear that Joan never intended to actually go to law school. Her character goes to college to major in pre-law without ever planning to actually go to law school because college is a place for young women to get married. Katherine Watson butts heads with her student Betty Warren, played by Kirsten Dunst, because Betty misses multiple classes after getting married. Watson does not want to look the other way and make an exception for newly married students despite having it explained to her that at Wellesley it is a tradition for teachers to allow newlywed students to miss class. Even at the institutional university level, more value is placed upon marriage than one’s academic studies. Katherine attempts to resist the institutional priority of marriage over academic studies and careers by trying to inspire her students to do things like go to grad school and have a career and a family at the same time which is considered to be radical by conservatives like Betty. At the end of the film Betty eventually turns around at the end of the film because she experiences the worst thing that could ever socially happen to a wealthy young woman her age—a divorce. The film demonstrates the high degree of social constraints placed upon aristocratic women in the typically heavily romanticized time period of the 1950s.

In the film And the Spring Comes, characters are also stigmatized for valuing their careers over marriage, but they are also working-class aspiring artists who live in poverty and rundown tenement housing. In this film, unmarried older characters are stigmatized by the rest of society and it is similar to how some students view professor Katherine with suspicion due to her marital status in Mona Lisa Smile. Professor Wang spends her entire life attempting to become an opera singer in Beijing but is unable to set aside the time to get married due to the highly competitive opera singer market. Marriage for Wangwould forever prevent her from obtaining her life’s dream. Both professor Wang and Mr. Hu, two aspiring artists, consider getting married to put rumors about them to rest because they have foregone marriage during the development of their artistic careers. The film And the Spring Comes has characters in a more commonplace situation financially and socially by depicting the poor and the women in the movie face not only challenges like marriage blocking career opportunities but also dealing with domestic abuse and drunken men whereas in Mona Lisa Smile one of the worst things that could conceivably happen to a young woman is a divorce. Both films explore the effects of marriage on careers for women, but the film And the Spring Comes takes a more pragmatic approach to the topic by having more commonplace character backgrounds.

Hi, Steven
We feel it a pleasure to have the chance to communicate with you about our review. Since we have read it, we both agree that it is an excellent review.
The review clearly compares the concept of women's marriage in the two movies. Tradition encourages women to get married. In the film Mona Lisa Smile, advertising and market forces pushes women towards marriage. In the film And the Spring Comes, characters are blamed for pursuing careers. You have a good understanding of the theme of the two movies.
What’s more, the outline of the writing and narration of the plot are very clear and complete. You select typical examples to prove your views and organize language well. We think our group should learn this from you. Given that you are native English speaker, the review has proper use of language, fluent sentence and natural paragraph cohesion. But if you can put the final summary into another new paragraph, the central idea will be more distinct so that the review would be better.
To conclude, your review is well written. If you have any questions or advice, please contact us. We will reply you at any time.
Yours,
Xinyi Yu,Xin Zheng

Hi, Steven
We are really happy to communicate with you. After reading your article, We think there are so many things deserving our learning. At the beginning of your passage, you directly demonstrate the theme, which renders the reader have a grasp of what you are going to show in the following writing. Then the logic of the article is quite clear. Accordingly, the passage naturally maintains coherence. What’s more, we both think your language is very native and natural, which is an important part for both of us to learn in the future study.
However, there are still a few small mistakes that make the article slightly imperfect. Just like the sentence in the last paragraph ：Marriage for Wang would forever prevent her from obtaining her life ‘s dream. You forget to leave a space between the word Wang and would, which is small mistake if you can be more careful. Furthermore, we think that the last two sentences of the last paragraph can be used as a separate paragraph. So your passage can have a conclusion in order to make the article more complete.
All in all, the advantages of the article far outweigh its disadvantages. And if you have any questions, you can communicate with us at any time. We will be very glad to receive your reply.
Yours,
Miao Lv, Ting Xuan Liu

Dear Xinyi Yu and Xin Zheng,

Thanks for your comments on my essay. My last paragraph was definitely the one that I was least confident in and I'm glad you offered some advice on how I can break it up to make my ideas more distinct! I'm glad that you learned something from reading my essay. Thanks for the advice!

Sincerely,
Steven Toomey

Dear Miao Lv and Ting Xuan Liu,

Thanks for examining my paper and taking the time to give me some feedback. I definitely plan on fixing the last paragraph to my essay—thanks for suggesting the last two sentences be moved to a new paragraph. I appreciate the specific advice and the typo spotting as well.

Sincerely,
Steven Toomey

Hi Steven Toomey,
It’s our pleasure to offer you advice. And we think the communication really does good to both of us. Thanks for your remark and revision. We will check our grammatical errors in detail. Thanks again.
Yours,
Miao Lu & Tingxuan Liu

revised essay

I would like to explore the concept of marriage in the films Mona Lisa Smile 2003 and And the Spring Comes 2007 in relation to women’s empowerment and mobility. Marriage acts in similar ways in both films as a socially valued institution that universally inhibits the movement of characters whose life experiences are radically different. In China and the U.S., tradition is a primary social force encouraging women to get married, but in the film Mona Lisa Smile we also see advertising and market forces as factors pushing women towards marriage as well. In both films marriage is depicted as holding back people from pursuing their dreams despite the significantly different physical, social, and economic environments that the characters occupy.
The characters in the film Mona Lisa Smile exist in the so-called golden age of 1950s America. The all-female student body at the prestigious Wellesley college is a group of upper class Caucasian aristocrats whose parents send them to college not to get an education and a diploma but to get married. The character Joan Brandwyn played by actress Julia Stiles exemplifies this concept. When art history professor Katherine Watson, played by actress Julia Roberts, asks her student Joan what her major is, Joan tells Katherine she is majoring in pre-law. Katherine then asks Joan what law school she plans on attending and it is made clear that Joan never intended to actually go to law school. Her character goes to college to major in pre-law without ever planning to actually go to law school because college is a place for young women to get married. Katherine Watson butts heads with her student Betty Warren, played by Kirsten Dunst, because Betty misses multiple classes after getting married. Watson does not want to look the other way and make an exception for newly married students despite having it explained to her that at Wellesley it is a tradition for teachers to allow newlywed students to miss class. Even at the institutional university level, more value is placed upon marriage than one’s academic studies. Katherine attempts to resist the institutional priority of marriage over academic studies and careers by trying to inspire her students to do things like go to grad school and have a career and a family at the same time which is considered to be radical by conservatives like Betty. At the end of the film Betty eventually turns around at the end of the film because she experiences the worst thing that could ever socially happen to a wealthy young woman her age—a divorce. The film demonstrates the high degree of social constraints placed upon aristocratic women in the typically heavily romanticized time period of the 1950s.
In the film And the Spring Comes, characters are also stigmatized for valuing their careers over marriage, but they are also working-class aspiring artists who live in poverty and rundown tenement housing. In this film, unmarried older characters are stigmatized by the rest of society and it is similar to how some students view professor Katherine with suspicion due to her marital status in Mona Lisa Smile. Professor Wang spends her entire life attempting to become an opera singer in Beijing but is unable to set aside the time to get married due to the highly competitive opera singer market. Marriage for Wang would forever prevent her from obtaining her life’s dream. Both professor Wang and Mr. Hu, two aspiring artists, consider getting married to put rumors about them to rest because they have foregone marriage during the development of their artistic careers.
The major difference between the two films are the characters’ positions within their own societies. Mona Lisa Smile focuses on characters existing in the upper echelon of 1950’s America where And the Spring Comes addresses women’s rights within the poor class. The film And the Spring Comes has characters in a more commonplace situation financially and socially by depicting the poor and the women in the movie face not only challenges like marriage blocking career opportunities but also dealing with domestic abuse and drunken men whereas in Mona Lisa Smile one of the worst things that could conceivably happen to a young woman is a divorce. Both films explore the effects of marriage on careers for women, but the film And the Spring Comes takes a more pragmatic approach to the topic by having more commonplace character backgrounds.

reflection:

I didn’t know what to expect for the border crossing activity because I have very little experience corresponding with people from outside of the U.S. I guess I was surprised at how similar my interpretations of the films were to the interpretations of the Chinese students. This was the most surprising thing for me, but I’m not sure why I figured things would be much different to begin with. It might be that the eastern texts we read for class were so different from western texts like Aristotle and this skewed my expectations. Another thing that I though more about was phrasing. Chinese students wrote grammatically correct sentences that sounded odd to me because it wasn’t a way that I would write something. I actually liked this though and don’t see it as a bad or wrong thing. For example, a student wrote “That is to say, they did not have to focus all their power on the families” I thought this sentence had interesting word choice. I would have chosen the words time or energy instead of power but power does work in a unique way. Using the word power helps bring focus to inequality more so than other words so it’s more effective. The third thing that I thought was interesting was the way students ended their essays with broad sweeping statements. It is as though everyone felt a need to explain how the films contributed to the meaning of life. I thought this was odd because it is something that I have been told to avoid.

I did incorporate advice into my revised draft. After taking a second look I realized that I really combined my concluding paragraph with the one before it and I agreed that the separation helped make my argument clearer.

If I had to pick three adjectives to describe my feelings about this experience they would be: fun, different, short. I liked being able to exchange with foreign students and it was fun to see different ways of using the English language. I did think that the activity felt short, and I think it might be interesting to do something similar over the course of an entire semester.

I think that the platform wasn’t the greatest for the activity. I ended up communicating via email so I could send a pdf file with edits and some more comments. The discussion board thread wasn’t great for this aspect of the activity. I also think that if this activity would have gone on longer I would have gotten to know the other students better and this might have lead to more in depth conversation.

This activity helped give me more knowledge about word choice when writing. I know that in my experiences in French I have written some interesting creations because I was forced to work with a limited vocabulary, and it was neat to read work from the perspective of the native speaker. This activity made me think more about this concept and I think it helped contribute to me personally by giving me a meaningful experience.