So Much Respect for How Mary Hatch Was Written

[deleted]

What?

Agreed. Any man would be lucky to find a wife like her. It's unfortunate that this kind of example is virtually non-existent in films today.

A conservative Christian female president.

That’s a great story.

I disagree that the writing was lazy or meant to suggest fate relegated Mary to a solitary existence without George. Mary was a character of action throughout the film. It was Mary who chose George as the love of her life from the earliest scenes when she was a little girl. She pursued him in Act 1-2 because she saw his great potential just like she saw the potential of the abandoned house and the struggling immigrant families and the honeymoon money. Unlike everyone else in the film, she repeatedly sees the hidden greatness in other people and other circumstances because she is great. Mary could have had any man she wanted but she only wanted George. Even before Clarence showed Mary’s alternative reality she had this exchange with George:

George: Mary Hatch, why in the world did you ever marry a guy like me?

Mary: To keep from being an old maid.

George: You could have married Sam Wainwright, or anybody else in town.

Mary: I didn’t want anybody else in town

In the world where George does not exist, she’s unmarried by choice rather than because she couldn’t. There is no other man in town worthy enough for her to want. Her alternative story is sad but it’s not submissive; it’s what she chose.

I think that's more what people thought about how women should be back when this was made. Not lazy writing.

You're ignoring the fact that the film is very George-centered and that EVERYONE, male and female alike, was worse without George around.

Also, I think the film does say something about a person's natural purpose. Mary in particular, and we could say woman-kind in general, has a natural purpose to fulfill the role of a wife and mother. It could be argued that what we see in Mary without George around is the result of a person not fulfilling the purpose they've been called to, and therefore participating in a failed life rather than a fulfilled one.

This is not to say of course that every woman is called to be a wife and mother, no more than every man is called to be a husband and father, but certainly Mary is.

I have a lot of interesting exchanges with Otter. He’s cynical sometimes but willing to hear me out. I’ve often heard the Mary criticism he raises: i.e., that it’s a shallow implication that the worst fate to befall a woman is an unmarried life. But, he’s missing the point of that scene which was meant to demonstrate the impact of her alternative reality on George, not herself. As George finally realizes during the alternative reality, to have been chosen and loved by Mary was the greatest success of his life. He doesn’t ask Clarence for his life back until seeing Mary in that alternative reality. When he chases her down the street, he doesn’t say “What happened to you?” He says, “Don’t you know me? What’s happened to us?” Because without Mary knowing him and without the “us,” he sees that his entire existence is lost. He realizes she is the very meaning of his wonderful life.