252 Mona Lisa Smile

There are a number of movies on my “I’d like to see” list: Calendar Girls, In America, Something’s Gotta Give, Master and Commander, Big Fish, Win a date with Tad Hamilton, and Lost in Translation. Recently I’ve seen Girl with the Pearl Earring with a friend from art class, and last Thursday at the dollar theater, my husband and I enjoyed Mona Lisa Smile, now available on DVD. Not exactly Oscar quality, nor a gripping story, but enjoyable.

Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts) is the new art history teacher at Wellesley, which is depicted as a very conservative college, for the 1953-54 school year. Katherine’s first class reveals highly motivated, intelligent young women way ahead of her prepared material. The story is more or less narrated by Betty (Kirsten Dunst), sort of a leader of the rest of the girls, who is about to be married in mid-year. She writes for the school paper, blows the whistle on the school nurse for supplying birth control, and later has it in for Katherine who’s not sympathetic with her missing so many classes. Betty is controlled by her mother’s ambitions for her, and believes Katherine is interfering in the life of another student Joan (Julia Stiles) by encouraging her to go to law school.

Men don’t fare well in this story--Katherine's (Julia) love interest turns out to be a guy who lies about his WWII service, and her old boyfriend sort of took her for granted. Betty’s new husband is unfaithful, and Katherine’s landlady/friend, played by Marcia Gay Harden, was apparently dumped during the war and lives in an alcoholic fantasy world of an "old maid."

Having lived through the 50s, I thought it a bit heavy handed with the “conservative” imagery, but it was after all, 50 years ago. Viewed through the lens of the current era when young women live with boyfriends they don’t plan to marry, live in dorms with men, and rack up $40,000 in debt before leaving college, I suppose the 50s do look somewhat ossified and girdled.

I asked a friend who was in college in the early 50s what she thought of the movie, and did it represent her experience at a private, exclusive Midwestern college. She wrote:

“I enjoyed Mona Lisa Smile. I surely did not go to an elite Eastern School, and as in most artistic works the motif seems somewhat exaggerated. Anyone doing any research whatsoever would not have come to [my college] in 1951 hoping to find a husband. The Korean War was on and it was the last year that the school did not have an ROTC unit. Therefore, guys who came were subject to the draft unless otherwise ineligible. I heard years later from a college administrator that as of July 1 that year they had 7 men enrolled. They obviously trolled the waters before Sept. Social life for the majority of women was almost non-existent. The town was dry and women were not allowed to have cars. The guys all migrated to a nearby town to drink beer on Friday night. There was almost no student union activity and you could not get out of town to a movie. I am sure that is why so many of my friends transferred after the sophomore year. I knew of only one gal who married and stayed in school. I would rather have died than tell my folks I wanted to get married. As for goals after graduation they were the usual education or "something" indefinable. We did not have elementary ed courses. One of my professors said casually during my second year, "You are going to graduate school aren't you?'' The thought had never occurred to me up to that point.”