Last night I watched Roman Holiday. It’s wonderful, it’s glorious, oh my Audrey, blah blah blah.
I have been reading a lot of feminist blogs lately, so issues of gender roles and patriarchal assumptions are much on my mind. I started looking at Roman Holiday through that lens.
Audrey Hepburn is a princess. Yep. And the perfect woman. Yep. She is delicate, mannered, lovely, polite, regal, helpless, and tiny. It is interesting throughout to watch how very little difference there is between how a princess behaves and how we want (or are expected to want) a woman to behave. The movie only works because there isn’t that much distance between the two.
Princess Ann expects to be chauffered. She expects doors opened for her. She expects to be able to ask for anything she wants, and have someone else provide it. She can order champagne while out with someone whom she knows is broke (he had already divided all his cash between the two of them the night before), and fully expect him to pay.
Some of this is “royal” and sheltered; she has never been out in the world before. But think; if the movie had the genders reversed, would it be even remotely acceptable? If the genders weren’t fully reversed, if it was Gregory Peck and Eddie Albert taking a prince rather than a princess on the town, would they be as accepting? Would they be as understanding that it isn’t the poor prince’s fault that he’s sheltered and ignorant? I think not.
I think, in fact, that a movie about a prince could only work if the prince was seriously taken down a peg. Not so Roman Holiday. Audrey exits as she enters, with her dignity perfectly intact, protected by gentlemen like Peck.
Of course, we understand that she’s a wonderful woman, because in the end, she offers to cook for Peck, and declares, passionately, longingly, that she can cook, vacuum, and iron and wishes she had the opportunity. Iron? Oh, the fuck. When did a princess learn to iron? And why would she want to?
No, don’t answer that. It’s because she is a loveable woman, and a truly loveable woman must move from being a spoiled child to an adult who spoils males. That is the only acceptable trajectory. Thus it is a tragedy that Ann/Audrey will never have that opportunity, must instead lead her country (like a man), and we love her because she leads with dignity, but she hates to lead, and therefore remains feminine. If she enjoyed it, if she felt capable of doing good, if her speeches had content instead of being meaningless blather, then she would be less loveable, because she would be less a woman.
1953. Gotta love it. It’s so, so much like 2006.
Isn’t another take on the ending, then, a subtle hint of the power that women were gaining? They (society) didn’t want to “see” it, but when push came to shove she (a woman) had to be a leader (considered a man’s job) because that was what was expected of her (the direction society was headed in). I imagine in 1953 the nation was still digesting the empowerment that women had tasted during the war effort. On the surface everything was June Cleaver, but underneath a seed had been planted. My mom, born in 1941, is a perfect reflection of that social change. Her full time job for 20 years was “Mom” but underneath that beat the heart of a entrepreneurial, feminist rebel. Yeah, she’s still having a hard time reconciling exactly who the hell she is.
Interesting take on it. Thanks.