 | But back to Rose. I love all the symbolism that surrounds her. For example, while she's around Cal and Ruth (her mother), she's usually in some sort of confinement. Like that scene where Ruth is lacing her into a corset, which is symbolic of the fact that Ruth wants Rose to conform to everyone's standards. In contrast, when she gets around Jack, not only does he let her fly, she is more at ease with him, and eventually wears umm... nothing at all. :-) |
| So did Rose love Cal? Probably so, at least before she got to know him. I mean, he's rich, he's handsome (is he ever :-), he's charming, on the surface at least. But after she got to know him, I think she began to feel trapped and suppressed. So then along comes Jack, and she falls in love with him. Well who wouldn't, after being with that arrogant, materialistic, overbearing jerk? But it was still a big step for Rose to choose Jack over Cal, for several reasons. First, he had money. Ever read Pride and Prejudice? Rose's mother was rather like Mrs. Bennet, but I'll talk about that when I get to her mother, k? She expected Rose to marry rich, since she had a chance to do so. So Rose was under enormous pressure from her mother to choose Cal over Jack. Besides her mother's pressure, there was the added pressure of having over 500 people already invited to the wedding. Tell me *that* wouldn't put pressure on you. Yet she chose Jack, which is a huge step in the direction of developing her personality. |  |
 | A question I asked myself the first time I watched this movie was, "WHY DID SHE EVEN *SUSPECT* THAT JACK STOLE THE HEART OF THE OCEAN?? IS SHE OUT OF HER MIND???" But the second time, I actually gave it serious thought. Of course she had reason to suspect it. I mean, let's think about this realistically here. Pretend (LOL! Yeah, that's real realistic.. :-) you're a single girl living in 1912 who is supposed to have lots of money. Then all of a sudden you fall in love with a man who has nothing (well okay, ten bucks in his pocket, a couple of sheets of paper, and air in his lungs), and he says he loves you too. Then he is accused of having stolen one of your diamonds, and the diamond is found on him. What's the first thing you'd think? Well *I* would have thought, "That was all he wanted... my money... he never loved me at all. How could I have been so ridiculously stupid? I slept with him." Which is what, IMO, Rose was probably thinking right about then. |
| So did Rose love Jack? I mean, she married after all. Does that mean it was just a fling? Of course not. Don't be ridiculous. She loved him. She proved it, not only in risking her life to save him, but in surviving. In Romeo and Juliet, the two lovers proved their love for each other by dying (although, I don't technically think that says anything. Sure, they died, but they didn't die for each other. They died for themselves). The fact that Rose was able to go on living after Jack died shows how much she loved him. She went on to prove in her life that he had changed her so utterly from the suppressed miserable creature she was when she stepped onto the Titanic that she could in fact do anything she wanted. Her pictures at the end of the movie show her riding a horse through the surf with "one leg on each side"; going to university; really flying; and many other things. |  |
