Word: spinsterhood
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...subject of American Gothic is in fact a small-town Midwesterner and his unmarried daughter, and once this is seen, the details of the painting fall into shape, as Wood meant them: the pitchfork becomes a scepter of paternal authority, a weapon for fending off suitors and perpetuating spinsterhood; its shape is echoed in the limp seams of the man's overalls, foreshadowing his own masculine debility; and so forth...
...things, on the evidence of Hepburn's films of the '50s and '60s: the lonely triumph of spinsterhood (Summertime, The African Queen, The Rainmaker), the sad declineinto dementia (Suddenly Last Summer, Long Day's Journey into Night). These later roles gave her the opportunity to soar, and she played each lovely chance to the hilt, whether she was getting morosely drunk over a lemonade in Pat and Mike (1952) or losing herself in heroin and reverie as O'Neill's Mary Tyrone...
...face up to the question at its center. It ends with Gilles decision to marry Yvette; we can only guess what Louise, whose loneliness sparked the plot and whose carnal rebirth has been its main feature, will do. Perhaps she continues her quest, and perhaps she resigns herself to spinsterhood, but that--and not the conventional peace that Gilles makes with the world--should be the focus of the film...
...exactly Scarlett O'Hara, but then who is? The real Dixie woman, says Daniell, is doomed to madness, spinsterhood or suicide unless she conforms to one of a few revered stereotypes. There is, among others, the belle, charming and pampered to a fare-thee-well, groomed for little more than catching men: "If a woman behaved correctly-that is, in a properly manipulative and feminine way-she would receive the rewards of a doting (and successful) husband, comfortable house, beautiful children, and freedom from the need to work for a living." There is also the good ole girl, "realistic...