Broken Engagement

A decade after this movie, on the show "I Love Lucy," the word "pregnancy" was considered indecent. A lot of things were considered indecent (including showing a married couple sleeping in anything other than twin beds).

So back in 1942, audiences had been even LESS exposed to 'decent people' discussing matters relating to sex and reproduction.

At the time audiences were introduced to "Now, Voyager" it would have been VERY unusual to hear a respectable woman (i.e., not a 'fallen' woman) refer to having a child in any but the most roundabout way. And discussing having had a drink and then getting intimate with a man---this would have been considered very, very questionable.

The audience, having seen Charlotte's difficult life, would forgive her---but would understand perfectly that Livingston felt uncomfortable at hearing Charlotte's remarks, and would doubt that she was the wife for him.

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I think he's expecting her to be 'virginal' and 'inexperienced', and when she obliquely tells him she has known real passion (her night with Jerry in the car), he's a bit taken aback. Women of that time were expected to be virgins and 'good wives' and not talk about drinking, sex or past experiences. As an aside: it's very vague what happened in the back seat of the car: perhaps they had sex, perhaps not; all is rendered elliptically.

Elliott is very, VERY straightlaced and traditional. Boston proper and all that. Charlotte has come out of her shell and discovered life and love and passion, so when she speaks of it, even obliquely, he is more than taken aback. He thought he was getting a little naive, unsophisticated, provincial innocent, which by that point she was not.

Something that's discussed in the book, and implied in the movie, is that Elliott is VERY conventional and a proper gentleman. Charlotte, despite her strict upbringing, has actually become a very free spirit and very UNconventional. She reads scandalous books and doesn't look down her nose at anybody, and doesn't care if people find her lifestyle questionable. (There's a bit in the book about how a rumor starts that Tina is actually Charlotte's illegitimate daughter, but Charlotte quietly silences the rumor by having Tina's mother and sisters come to visit.)

It's clear that while Charlotte LIKES Elliott a lot, and is very fond of him, she doesn't love him, and would rather have the memory of her brief time with Jerry than be tied to someone conventional whom she doesn't love. She knows she would be a bad match for him. (In the book, Elliott ends up meeting someone else who's a better match, and she throws an engagement party for them.)

It's actually one of the great ways this story bucks the convention of the time, which would normally have the heroine finding true love with Elliott, or Jerry showing up saying, "Oops, my wife passed away, let's get married!" Charlotte turns away from marriage and retains her autonomy, and becomes an independent, fulfilled woman on her own. (Which was itself a bit controversial; the idea of a woman deliberately not marrying when she had the chance, and choosing to find fulfillment as a single woman, actually raised quite a few eyebrows when the book came out. One critic called it "a sustained attack on monogamy.")


"Value your education. It's something nobody can ever take away from you." My mom.