The Lady Eve portrays the ambitions and schemes of the lower classes to achieve their piece of the American Dream and the anxieties of the upper class to be hoodwinked and cheated by the lower classes. Jean Harrington and her con artist partners will lie, cheat, and even feign love to get their piece of the pie. Charles Pike and his family navigate in a rarified world of expeditions, ocean liners and suburban Connecticut mansions, free of mingling with the hoi polloi, and they flee any whiff of scandal. Yet, somehow Jean and Charles fall in love and even are happily partnered at the end. Is social mobility possible in this movie, at that time (1941)? Can people from different classes find common ground? Do the well-to-do have a reason to fear the lower classes? What is the movie telling us about the politics of class and wealth?
During the 1940s, social class determined how you were viewed. With the wealthy upper-class seeing themselves as being superior and looking down upon the middle and lower class. However, social mobility is definitely possible as shown in this movie, The Lady Eve. Jean was originally instructed and taught by her father on how to deceive and profit from others. She originally had the intention of conning Pike to take his money and trade social classes with him, but seeing him and finding out his true personality, she realizes internally that this specific man was hers to love, not fool. They got married later and that means that now Jean has access to the luxuries Pike had, moving her up the social ladder and changing her perspective and possible experiences for as long she is married to him. Also, common ground is not as hard to find as the cocky upper-class people make it to be. Everyone is human, which means everyone has emotion. As shown in this movie, although he was never made known of the fact that Jean is in fact a lower social class, he still acted as if she was equal to him. Implying that even if she was to tell Pike that she was from a lower class, it wouldn't matter. One of the messages the movie was trying to depict was that the politics of the social class is made and maintained by the upper-class, but once that layer is taken away, there really isn't much difference between the classes.
ReplyDeleteIn "The Lady Eve", Charles is described as more wealthy than Jean, though Jean has the illusion of being wealthy. She is much poorer than Charles, and it is shown to the audience that she only acts rich, and is a con artist. The two initially fall in love, though without Charles knowing her secrets. For quite a while, Charles only sees Jean as someone he thinks she is, not really knowing her true identity. At that point, their love technically transcends the difference in wealth of the two individuals. However, Charles didn’t actually know that Jean wasn’t as rich as he initially thought. Once he found out that Jean wasn’t actually rich as she said she would, the relationship between the two essentially ended immediately. However, it isn’t incredibly clear that Charles was disappointed in the dishonesty or the fact that she wasn’t so rich. Charles then fell in love with who he thought to be Lady Eve, who was also portrayed as quite rich, which was only a façade. The relationship between Lady Eve and Charles ended for other reasons unrelated to wealth. In all the confusion of the divorce between Lady Eve and Charles, Charles reunited with Jean, and was quite happy to see her, seeming to ignore that Jean was actually much poorer and a con artist. At the end, the focus of Charles and Jean seemed to be what brought the two together initially, not their differences in things such as profession or wealth as the two seemed to get along perfectly once they reunited.
ReplyDeleteIt was important to be in the higher class in the 1940s, so social mobility was possible at that time and in the film, The Lady Eve. Classes were so important because the higher the class you were in, the more respect and opportunities you would have. Jean Harrington and her father, “Colonel” Harrington would do anything to get money in order to be in the upper class. Before Charles Pike and Jean Harrington meet, Jean uses her mirror and narrates what all the women are doing: watching Charles, trying to catch his attention by walking past him, dropping something in front of his table, etc. Those women look up to Charles and want him to watch them and fall in love with them, so they can be rich, married to a handsome man, and be in the higher class. However, Charles wasn’t interested in anyone until he met Jean Harrington the con artist. At first, Jean only wanted Charles’ money, but then she starts to fall in love with him and he starts to fall in love with her. Although Charles finds out that she is a con artist, ending their relationship. Jean gets angry and goes to dinner at his house as Lady Eve and causes Charles to be baffled. She convinces him that she is Lady Eve and not Jean and he starts to fall in love again. Jean succeeds in her original goal of having Charles’ money by getting married to him. Social mobility is possible as shown by Jean Harrington because she became successful in becoming wealthy and working her way up to being in the upper class.
ReplyDeleteThe Film, The Lady Eve, portrays that even if there is a class difference, it is allowable for people of different social classes to be lovers. I’m not saying that it is not highly frowned upon or they are many setbacks, but it is allowable. There will always be that divide between the upper and lowest class; each will negatively affect the other. The movie is not helping this narrative either with referencing Jean Harrington’s partner while gambling with Charles Pike con’s him. Jean’s goal was to con Charles for his money regardless. This does aid in the narrative that the poor want to steal from the rich. It does make sense for someone to have a lot of something to be cautious with, but Jean Harrington’s portrayal makes it seem like money only wants men for their money, and all women are gold diggers. While people of all social mobility can come to a common ground, movie plots like this will not change the narrative of poor vs. rich. Especially during the 1940s, the class divide was much more comprehensive, and it was less likely for people of different social classes to be intimate, unlike today. There is still a massive divide between all socioeconomic classes, but it wasn’t as stigmatized as it is today. This is a common trend of most of our core cultural identifiers, but The Lady Eve portrayed socioeconomic status only. The movie tells us that poor and rich relationships are based on true love and emotion but start with money. Did Jean love him at the end? The end did portray more true emotions than the beginning, but their relationship started with her being a gold digger. I think people from the upper and lower classes can find love, but there are many facets, and most people will not see it as true love, or it may never be true love. Based on gender roles, this movie would have gone drastically different if Charles was poor and Jean was rich.
ReplyDeleteIn The Lady Eve, Jean Harrington is shown as the possibility of social mobility of the time, as she will use any method that she can to find a way to be with the wealthy Charles Pike. The movie tries to claim that even in 1941, social mobility is difficult as Jean continues to struggle to move outside of her social class and feels that her only way is to continue pursuing Charles. Although Charles was able to connect with Jean before he knew that she was a con artist and the movie shows that people from different classes can find common ground. However, the movie also makes a statement about the well-to-do fearing the lower classes by showing the reaction of Charles when he finds out that Jean is a con artist and he immediately wants nothing to do her. It is only through Jean disguising herself as Eve that she is able to get with Charles, who then leaves her again as he finds out more about her past and all the men she has slept with. At the end of the movie, however, Charles decides to reconcile with who he thinks is Jean, and social mobility is shown as being possible.
ReplyDeleteJean finds herself in a situation where Charles acknowledges that love can go beyond the classes but must use the alter-ego of Eve in order to persuade Charles be with her. Overall, as explained in the movie, love in theory may be able to transcend class borders; but wealth still keeps them far apart.