Could Lizzy have a happy married life?: Compare the movie Pride and Prejudice to Frankenstein and The hours

 

 

Could Lizzy have a happy married life?

: Compare the movie Pride and Prejudice to Frankenstein and The hours  

 

     Today, we know the bad aspects of patriarchy and take efforts to fix existing patriarchy in our daily life. However, patriarchy was accepted as a common conception around the world before. Even now, there are some patriarchy remained like a wife follows husband’s first name in the west. Surely, Women were poorly treated and given less right than men. They were suffered from patriarchy which restricted and pressed them. Through the descriptions in the literary works written in the past, we can notice women’s agony occurred from patriarchy presented in variety ways. It is also well presented in the novel based films which are going to be discussed in this essay, Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, and The hours. The movie Pride and Prejudice takes a happy ending because Lizzy is accommodating patriarchy compares to other women characters in Frankenstein and The hours. However, according to the miserable ends of these two movies and Lizzy’s smartness, independency, it can’t be said whether her marriage will be last with happiness or not.

 

     Early 19C of England, a background of the film Pride and Prejudice, it was a very patriarchal society that male cousin inherit all the properties if the head of family die with no son. Women had no right for inheritance. So, to women, getting married was the only way to make a living. In the film, there are many scenes appeared women struggle to attract wealth man. Unlikely from other women, Lizzy, a heroine of the film, presented as a very independent and smart women. She takes against with patriarchy with her daring attitude. She doesn’t care bothering men’s mind. She has no doubt of pointing out men’s bad attitudes toward women and being skeptical about marring men just for money. However, it seems even Lizzy is accommodating patriarchy in the film. She truly thanks to Darcy paying Whickham for his marriage with Lizzy’s younger sister Lydia, even though Whickham was a money chasing fraud. She cares her family name more than her sister’s happiness. “You may only call me Mrs. Darcy when you are completely and perfectly and incandescently happy.” It was Lizzy’s line of the ending scene added in the movie which was screened just in America. She is willing to accept the name ‘Darcy’. This scene emphasizes Lizzy’s positive attitude toward patriarchy, and she seems to feel happiness from that.

 

     If Lizzy could have a happy ending by accepting patriarchy later, the movie Frankenstein takes it’s ending in a miserable way because a woman character refuses patriarchy at the end. In the film, a woman character named Elizabeth appeared and she seems to be accommodating patriarchy much more actively than Lizzy. She supports Frankenstein, leads and cares Frankenstein, also gives love to Frankenstein. She was willing to be a mother, sister, and lover for Frankenstein. Elizabeth herself was the ideal feature of woman which men demanded. But at the end of the film, being created as a creature, she realizes of the unfairness generated from patriarchy. She notices that she could only exist as an ideal woman which Frankenstein and the male creature wanted. She was made by them and made for them. To escape from this male gaze, she chooses to commit suicide.

 

     By the perspective of patriarchy, if Frankenstein paid attention to the relationship between Dr. Frankenstein, male creature, and Elizabeth, the movie The hours is focusing patriarchy existing beyond the family, more in a macroscopic perspective. In the movie, three women living in each different eras named Virginia Woolf, Laura, and Clarissa appeared mediated with a novel 『Mrs. Dalloway』. They are all presented as smart and independent characters like Lizzy. However, somehow, they experience deep skeptical moment of their life and undergo impulse of suicide. Laura’s suicide was just ended with attempt but Virginia Woolf, the author of 『Mrs. Dalloway』 herself, died of suicide as is known. Virginia was suffering with mental illness, so she could not afford to do households, but only writing. Because of that, she felt great guilt toward her husband, and it was the reason of her committing suicide. Laura makes her decision of suicide while baking a cake for her husband’s birthday. She suddenly feels emptiness, she feels that she was bounded to do the households and she even fail to bake a good shaped cake. Their decision of committing suicide was not because of their husbands being sexist or being patriarchal. Husbands appeared in the movie were all kind and devoted to them, like Mr. Darcy. The problem was the patriarchy which restricted and pressed them existing out of the household, spread in the society and whole culture.

 

     Through the three movies dealing with 19c to 20c’s English women’s life, we could look into women’s agony occurred from patriarchy at that time. From the movie Frankenstein and The hours, patriarchy was described as a painful thing to make women commit suicide to escape from it. Right after Darcy and Lizzy’s marriage, they can be happy at that point, but considering other women’s ends, making the question like ‘Will their happy marriage persist?’ is reasonable enough. Considering the background of 19C to early 20C, it is predictable that Lizzy, who was smart and independent woman, would have remained in unhappiness. Their unhappiness was not because of their household, or their husband. The agony of those women who couldn’t conform to the ideal feature of women that society wanted, could not be resolved.