Family Marylee example essay topic

Written on the Wind, the 1957 film directed by Douglass Sir is incredibly melodramatic; written and performed like a soap opera. The characters are built on extremes -- if a person has a flaw, the flaw is exaggerated to the point where it becomes a real problem. One character that becomes a real problem in the film is Marylee Hadley, the daughter of the very rich and successful oil tycoon Jasper Hadley. Marylee is not the average lady of the 1950's. In fact, in that time, a woman like her would not be considered a "lady". The way her character is portrayed left a very negative impression on me in a film I strongly disliked.

Marylee is an independent and liberated woman, but these good and strong qualities are demonstrated as flaws and are greatly exaggerated. The film develops these traits in a very negative form, making her rude, vulgar, overly sexual, and threatening, the definite antithesis to a "lady" of the 1950's. During a time when women were confined to a life in the home and of the family, Marylee's character proved that women could step out of the mold, but wrongfully implied that these women are the downfall of family life. In order to interpret the representation of Marylee, one must first analyze the setting of the home. The family Marylee comes from is not the standard American family of the 1950's.

For one thing, the family is not middle class, but very rich and very high class. They live in an oversized mansion and the children, Kyle and Marylee, drive fancy, expensive sports cars. Although the father is present in the story, his position in the family is to be the hard-working father whose main purpose is to keep the business running. As the general standard goes, his family sphere remains outside the home and within the workplace. The home sphere on the other hand is incomplete. Mr. Hadley fulfills his duties as a father, but there is no one to fulfill the duties of the mother.

Because the mother is not present, there is no domestic order, hence the out of control children: Kyle the alcoholic and Marylee the calculating nymphomaniac. By developing the setting of the home and the children as they are, the film reflects on the 1950's mainstream discourse of how a proper family should not be. The ideal family is the nuclear family, a family with both a father and a mother, and obedient -- preferably two -- children. As mentioned before, the father's duty is to work and support the family financially while the mother's job is to keep the home and family in order.

Because the Hadley family does not fit this mold, they are regarded and developed as immoral and unruly. What it all comes down to is the women. The women either make or break a family. They are who to blame for any disorder that may go on within the home.

The model young lady of the 1950's was expected to be well-behaved, obedient and submissive. For a girl to be acceptable and suited for marriage, she must listen to her parents and respect others. The girl should not drink or smoke, nor should she engage in premarital sex. Marylee does not follow these rules, and enjoys breaking them all. She does drink and smoke and she does have premarital sex. Instead of taking the role of the mother and keeping the home and caring for the family, she takes advantage of her freedom.

She is assertive, knows what she wants and is determined to get it. With a mind of her own, she takes action in her decisions. Rather than making something good out of her assertiveness, the film turns it into something negative. Her behavior becomes disruptive. Because she is too liberated and able to do as she pleases, so unlike the conventional women of her time, she is depicted as an out of control nymphomaniac. It was uncommon for a girl in those days to be taking the role of the aggressor, and it was seen as bad.

These days, women in charge of what they want are very admirable, but times were different back then and women like that were sneered at. Marylee is one of those determined women. She is in love with Mitch Wayne, but he does not want her. He wants Lucy Moore, the opposite of what Marylee is. Lucy is the conventional, well-behaved girl of the 1950's, the ideal woman, the ideal companion. A woman like Marylee was too strong of a character, perhaps even too bawdy and too vulgar to be even considered for a potential wife; an independent woman with too much baggage.

Her independence and her unrequited love leads to her uncontrollable behavior, her drinking, smoking, and promiscuity. In a way, the film seems to hold her accountable for the events leading to the death of her father. The girl is nothing but trouble. In a drunken escapade, Marylee drives out in her sports car and picks up an attendant at a gas station. Later, police officers take her home. When her father learns about her night's getaway and about her popularity with the boys in town, he goes after her in a disappointed rage.

As her carefree music is blaring in her bedroom and as Mr. Hadley climbs the staircase to scold his daughter, he loses his grip of the banister, tumbles down the steps and dies. While all this is happening, Marylee, still drunk and enjoying herself, knows nothing of what has just occurred. If she were not so uncontrollable, so wild and so carefree, none of this would have happened. The event of her father's death shows the dysfunctions within the non-standard American home and how one woman is the central figure of that family's turmoil. Now that her father has died, everything seems to further unhinge and completely break apart. Marylee's wild side took part in the end of her father's life and how her selfishness will take part in the destruction of her brother's friendship with Mitch and his marriage with Lucy.

Because Marylee must be set up as the total contradiction to the conventional, good girl of the fifties, her selfishness and disloyalty to the family must be taken to extremes. A good girl always looks out for the well-being of the family and must always put the family before herself. That is not the case with Marylee. Marylee knows that Mitch, Kyle's best friend, is in love with Lucy. She also knows that Mitch would never betray Kyle, but because she is so jealous, angry, and selfish, she goes ahead with her scheming plan and seeks to destroy her brother's friendship with Mitch. Putting false ideas in Kyle's head about an affair going on between Mitch an Lucy, she hopes to produce a fight between the two men in order for Mitch to stay away from Lucy altogether.

Perhaps she believes that after Mitch's final realization of Lucy's unavailability, all doors will open for her and Mitch. Her plan results to be unsuccessful, seeing as how she never gets Mitch, when in fact Lucy does. Not only does Marylee ruin a friendship and a marriage, but she also ends another life. Kyle had been sober for just about a year since he had met Lucy, but once he began suspecting of his wife's unfaithfulness, he began to drink as heavily as before. Marylee's input on the relationship between Mitch and Lucy only made his drinking problem sink to a new low. Instead of feeling happiness for Lucy's pregnancy, he immediately assumes that the baby is Mitch's.

In a jealous, drunken rage, Kyle goes after his friend with a gun. While this is happening, Marylee can only have a look of satisfaction on her face as she becomes a spectator of the fight. She is who put the mistrusting ideas in Kyle's head. She tore apart a friendship an a marriage, and now in defense for Mitch, she accidentally shoots and kills her own brother. His death was an accident, but the events leading to his death were intentionally set about by Marylee. The breakdown of the home all comes down to this one young lady who comes from an incomplete home.

Her mother is not present in the home, therefore the children turn out to be bad, but the worse of the two children is the girl Marylee. She fails to be the well-behaved, obedient daughter who follows the footsteps of every other homemaker of her time. Rather than being the model young lady, she is free and independent, bold in her actions and decisions. The film takes these uncommon qualities and distorts them into ugly character flaws. She is different; difference has always been seen as something bad.

Of course a woman with Marylee's strong traits will be regarded as defective and unnatural during a time when women were expected to cook and to clean and to basically have no life outside the home. In a melodrama, such as Written in the Wind, every character trait must be placed to extremes; either the person is very good or very bad. Marylee's character is set out on the very extremes of malignancy. She is made into a selfish, unloving woman with masculine attributes such as her promiscuity and her smoking and drinking, but Marylee is just as loving and as caring as any other woman.

She also has feelings and feels pain. The sad thing about her is that she is made out to be so bad. All she ever wanted was to be happy alongside her one true love Mitch, but because she was not the submissive girl of the 1950's, she never got to be happy. The message I got from the film is that women can have a mind of their own, but will only result in trouble and catastrophe..