My Brilliant Career - first film

First film of the class is My Brilliant Career. Australian. Director Gillian Armstrong. Writers: Miles Franklin (novel) & Eleanor Whitcombe. Actors: Judy Davis (of later Woody Allen movie fame) & Sam Neill.

My assessment: Wizard of Oz meets Pride and Prejudice with Australian grit and non-Darcy ending.

Class assignment: Discuss Sybella's looks.

Sybella had both high esteem and realistic esteem about her looks. She knew that she was not attractive and it gave her freedom to express herself without feeling that it would count against her in society since she felt she was not a part of the "beautiful women to be betrothed set".

Her mother, due to Sybella's looks, found her useless as someone they couldn't marry off and was a burden financially to them. Luckily her grandmother, a proper Victorian woman, saved her from beoming a full-time maid and her dusty life in the outback.

Her grandmother took her into her beautiful home with servants and started dressing her and treating her like a lady. She was less critical of her and thought marriage was possible for her. She tried to encourage her to marry a nerdy man Frank who would inherit money in England.

There was another bachelor, Harry, who was very handsome and in-demand. He became infatuated with her wild un-Victorian ways. In the end, she turned down his marriage proposal. She wanted her independence to be a free full writer. Also she did not want him to be a burden by her lack of looks and society training when he had the ability to marry into beauty and wealth

Film Background: The film is a dramatization of the autobiography of the same name by Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, known as Miles Franklin. She was a famous Victorian Australian author. Later in life she came out as a lesbian.