Not Your Average Rom Com Heroine

Venetia

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Gilda Farrell is the unicorn of women movie characters: she’s unconventional without being (the cliched Hollywood-version of) a free spirit. Sure, most of us have heard that such a thing exists, without ever believing it could be true.

Trust me, dears. Gilda is the real deal.

She’s whip-smart, witty, straightforward, and determined to make the choices that are best for her. Even, as it turns out, when they are considered brazen or unbecoming of a “nice” woman. She starts with the awareness that women suffer from an almost unrelenting series of double standards:

Gilda’s Speech in Design for Living (1933)

 From there, she decides to take action. This is why Gilda is so exceptional, why her decision to live romantically with two men is so fucking revolutionary. It is, also, why she is not a free-spirit:

To label her as such denies Gilda her self-governance, her experience, her bravery, and her brains.

Without them, she’d be just another silver screen beauty feigning eccentricity before accepting her fate as the good wife of an exceptionally handsome man.

Thank God for Gilda.

Her supposed immorality not only goes unpunished, but she gets to keep her self-respect, Gary Cooper, and Fredric March.

That’s pretty damn nifty.

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♣Venetia is our Feminism correspondent. She loves equality, swearing, and huge cups of coffee.

 The Miriam Hopkins Blogathon

The Miriam Hopkins Blogathon