Woman gives up dream to find love--imagine that

Last night I watched the Hallmark Hall of Fame's The Magic of Ordinary Days, starring Keri Russell, Skeet Ulrich, and Mare Winningham. Russell plays Livy Dunne, a young woman who is pregnant by a World War II soldier who abandons her. Her strict minister father sends her off to a tiny farm community in Colorado, to an arranged marriage with farmer Ray Singleton, whose brother has been killed in the war.

Ray is quiet, strong, and hard-working, and his family (Winningham plays his sister) is warm and loving. No conventional farm husband, Ray teaches Livy to drive his eccentrically-behaving truck, he does most of the cooking, and when he learns that she was in college studying archeology, he checks out books on Troy from the library so that he can learn and understand her passion. He doesn't judge her. He gives Livy her own room, and never pushes her into anything. He tells her he will love the baby, and we believe him.

For her part, Livy does farm wife chores and socializes with her new family, but it is in two Japanese internment camp harvesters that she finds soul-mates. Like Rose and Florrie, Livy is a prisoner who has committed no crime other than to be at the wrong place at the wrong time in a culture of hypocrisy and oppression. Together, they observe the beautiful butterflies on the farm while Rose and Florrie record and illustrate the observations, providing the film with a painful extended metaphor.

After six months, Livy's sister offers her a way out: Her husband has been sent to war, and Livy can live with her and go back to college while she cares for Livy's baby. Of course, we know how it is going to end--Livy will try to leave, but will end up staying on the farm, where she has found an abundance of love.

This is a good story, well acted, with some unexpected twists (Livy even ends up involved in the attempted escape of a German soldier). Winningham says of it: "We could do far worse than celebrate this wonderful love story--two people who come together under terribly awkward conditions, and then learn to respect and love each other deeply."

True. So why am I offended by it?

I am offended because the message, once again, is that women have to give up themselves in exchange for love. Ray gives up nothing. He is a lonely man who loves his land and his work and his family, and by the story's end, he is a happy husband who still has his land and his work and his family. We understand that Livy is happy, too--she has a loving and understanding husband, a warm new family, and a baby. But she has given up her dreams in order to achieve domestic contentment. Not that I expect anything else from the Hallmark Hall of Fame (I watched because I like Russell), which uses its commercial time to subvert people into thinking they don't have to bother to express their feelings because Hallmark will do it for them.

The farming people in this film are just about too good to be true. It is the educated women who have committed "sins"--biological ones, at that-- and must adjust their lives to conform with the unjust realities of race and gender in World War II America. Mare Winningham appears to have missed that part.