shows
up and serves as a liberating catalyst to the girls
who long for more than girdles and irons. Her bohemian
Art History professor is supposed to make the girls
think out of the mold, to question society’s norms,
to make them interested in the wider world. The story,
however, is nothing new, already having been covered
in “Dead Poets Society” (the movie has been
referred to as “Dead Poets Society” with
girls and “Dead Poets Sorority”); Julia
Roberts’ character in “Mona Lisa Smile”
is nowhere near as inspiring as Robin Williams’
character in the latter movie. Compared to the professors
that I encountered during my college years, she seemed
like a kindergarten teacher, and lest you think that
perhaps things were different in the 1950s, let me tell
you that if Wellesley had only been a cream puff finishing
school for rich snobs, I doubt you would have found
Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita, on
the English faculty in the 1950s.
The characters of the students
were also disappointing for being so stereotypical.
Kirsten Dunst played the “rich bitch” who
seemed to have a picture perfect life on the outside
but in reality was oppressed by both her mother and
her husband. Julia Stiles played the brainy girl who
got into Yale Law School but gave it all up to follow
her nerdy boyfriend/husband to the wilds of suburbia.
Maggie Gyllenhaal played the Jewish girl with loose
morals (i.e. slut) who sleeps with the Italian professor
and her own psychoanalyst. They all played roles that
were predictable from beginning to end, without any
subtlety or complexity. This was a far cry from the
complex and interesting girls I met at Wellesley, who
came from rich and varied backgrounds, and were interested
in so many different areas of
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