Jezebel

I was on a plane to Portland the other day, and was flipping through movies on a digiplayer when I came to an old movie called The Many Loves of Hilda Crane. I started it just for good measure but got sucked in over time. It wasn't because it was some forgotten wonder of a movie with an amazing plot, but because Hilda Crane herself was the representation of all women in her day struggling to find liberty and independence. The tag line for the movie is even, "I want to live like a man...and still be a woman!" Hilda's father had always told her that she could do and be anything she wanted, so she left home to get an education and ended up not being able to support herself and find a job, as well as going through two divorces. She thought she had found love, but the love went away because she believed love was the same as desire. She returns to her conservative hometown a total wreck, not knowing what to believe about life or love. Her past ends up getting exposed, the one man she desires refuses to marry her because he says she's a courtesan and not the type a man marries, so she gets married to a good, kind, respectable man whom she doesn't love because she thinks that's how it's supposed to be. But that doesn't change the fact that she's a wreck. Hilda drinks, stands up for herself, falls flat on her face, cheats on her husband, is rejected by her mother, and tries to even commit suicide. She's miserable and stumbling through life trying to find happiness and satisfaction through the beck and call of her emotional highs and lows.

I love Hilda because I see so much of myself in her. I see myself in the midst of failing classes and uncertainty about my career path, I see myself in confusion over what love is and what marriage is about after a failed relationship, I see myself making emotional decisions that I'll regret later, and I see myself trying to cope with an overwhelming feeling through addictive behavior. As Hilda rambles on in confusion and misery, flying from decision to decision and making life altering mistakes in an effort to cope, I see myself. I see the character that was so heavily overthrown by darkness, that the name Jezebel has come to represent: a malicious, scheming, sexually immoral, false teaching, power hungry woman. People love to degrade the Hilda's and the Jezebel's, but I wonder how many of them have ever been Hilda's and Jezebel's? It's ironic that Jezebel was thrown out a window to be trampled by the people and eaten by dogs in the Bible: it's similar to the way people treat Jezebel's today. I have to appreciate the fact that the Bible reminds me that to be overthrown by evil and to live in it is a serious offense, but I can't forget what it's like to be her and empathy breeds forgiveness in me.

I understand emotion and I understand mistakes, and that makes me to believe that those who acknowledge the Jezebel with hate instead of pity have had no experiences with emotion or mistakes, so who can realistically acknowledge her with hate but the self righteous?



8/4/11