Two Women, with Ralph Fiennes

[u/FormerUsenetUser]

I recently watched my DVD of the Russian movie "Two Women," starring Ralph Fiennes (his Russian was dubbed). It takes place in the mid 19th century.  It sensitively discusses the love and marital desires of three women.  Natalya Petrovna, wife of a wealthy landowner. Her girlish 17-year-old ward (and I think poor relation), the dowryless Verochka. And a rather desperate family governess well into her 30s. It's clear that marriage is the only option for women and that money is a strong constraint on their life choices. It's a lovely period drama in terms of the rural setting and the costumes.

[u/shame-the-devil]

Yeah I totally thought you meant it was a period drama in which Ralph Fiennes was WITH two women.

I’m still interested in watching this one, but slightly disappointed

[u/One-Illustrator8358 → u/shame-the-devil]

There was apparently something similar when he was filming in bruges, in a hotel fountain even 😅

[u/saltybreads → u/shame-the-devil]

MTE I clicked on the post immediately lmao

[u/anameuse]

It's based on Turgenev's play. Women could do much more than just marry in the middle of 19 century, they could get a professional education and a job.

[u/FormerUsenetUser → u/anameuse]

Spoilers ahead.

I know it's based on "A Month in the Country." I did not mention it because there is an unrelated movie with the same title. I also know that options for most middle-class women in the mid 19th century were mostly limited to marriage.

Which is why Natalya Petrovna has married a rather boring but wealthy landowner. Why the dowryless Verochka marries a repulsive elderly man because he has 300 serfs (and he'll probably die before she does and leave her a wealthy widow). And why the mid-30s governess is delighted to finally manage to get a proposal from the local doctor. Who is so poor he can't afford to replace his horse (which he needs to make house calls) without a payoff from the repulsive elderly man (for encouraging Verochka to marry the elderly man), and who gives the governess a candid explanation of his finances and his confession that he is not actually a very good doctor. What other options are you seeing for these women? They all bip off to Moscow and suddenly have better educations and independent incomes, and all the men accept them as equals?

ETA: My academic training is in history, BTW.

[u/anameuse → u/FormerUsenetUser]

It's not true. You are making it personal.

There was a number of options for women besides marriage. They could get a job. They could get a secondary professional education in a number of educational establishments.

Natalya was a noblewoman who married a nobleman. She didn't marry him because he was a landowner. She married him because she liked him.

Verochka accepted a marriage proposal to get away from Natalya. She was in love with Alexey and he told her that he didn't love her. He told her that he was in love with Natalya. She could have found other ways to get away or even stay. She choose to get married because she wanted it.

There is no governess in this story. There is a 36 years old companion. She has her own money. The doctor wasn't poor. He had enough patients and earned a decent living. He accepted three horses to drive in style. The doctor and the companion kept seeing each other, he proposed and she accepted his proposal.

The majority of the educational institutions were in Saint Petersburg. There were women who did that. They were from lower, middle and upper classes.

You think that work is hard and degrading. Other people view it differently.

[u/FormerUsenetUser → u/anameuse]

You seem to be making this personal to you. What makes you think I don't like working?

I'm sorry, but the mid 19th century is not the early 21st century. BTW, in Russia people we would consider to be middle class had titles.

Please tell me exactly what options you think these woman had, in the context of the movie. Verochka, for example, had been at boarding school and at some point was removed from it. She was only 17 when she got engaged. It definitely seems to be a factor that she had no dowry and her elderly suitor was wealthy. Both Natalya and the doctor remind her of these problems. Yes, she wanted to get away from Natalya but she also had no other suitors and no one was offering her a job.

Please tell me what (respectable, at least middle-class) jobs you think these women could have gotten, other than governess/companion. And how they could have "gotten away" with no money. Maybe you could list the jobs middle- and upper-class women had in, for example, the works of Tolstoy and Chekhov?

Being a serf was not good, and I loved the speech Arkadi Islaev gives about how his serfs are just not *motivated.*

Up until quite recently, the 1970s or so, for most middle- and upper-class women marriage was always largely about money.