Film's Social Implications

That's the way classical Hollywood dealt with this subject matter, especially in the woman's film genre (not that I'm saying this is a woman's film, but it has some of the elements, I think). Women were usually shown as independent and successful in their field, outside the rules of ordinary behaviour (which was liberating for the female audience – this sense of freedom), but by the end, it should be made clear, that the woman's only job was being a woman. That was the paradox of the woman's film, it both liberated women, and held them in social bondage.
“Woman of the Year” does this to a certain extent, although the ending might even leave it open to interpretation whether Tess goes back to work or not. But she was definitely willing to be the tame housewife, in any case.
I love the films of this time, but before I learned about this, I used to get annoyed with those movies so obviously trying to put women “in their place.” Now, I can both enjoy watching the movie and see what the “message” says about the time it was made in. A lot of films made around WWII reflect society's mounting fear, that women could compete with men in the working world.

Source: Jeanine Basinger's A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women

Well I can't call this movie feminist because the movie shows feminism and kind of ridicules it. They have the famous feminist aunt give everything up to marry Tess' father and talked about how she regretted all the feminism instead of being a wife fifteen years earlier. Tess' feminism and career seemed to be getting in the way of her marriage and while I don't believe Tess did give up her career in the end (and why should she? She doesn't even have any kids yet and she won't have to do any housework so it's not even an argument to have until she has to decide if she wants to stay home with kids or not. Which she wouldn't have to do but could still make that choice), that was Sam's choice.

I don't think it's as simple as saying all choices are equally feminist as long as a woman is the one making them because feminism is about choice because choices are never made in a vacuum. There was never any discussion of Sam giving up his career for her, it was all on whether she was going to give up her career for him. No, I don't think her being willing to give up her career instead of just trying to cut back on hours or something so she'd have more time to spend with her husband (which is a perfectly reasonable request for him to make. It's not like he'd be spending the time at work that he wants them to spend together. They'd both be at home sometime working on their relationship) is feminist. Choosing to conform to the sexist standards of the day isn't feminist.

No one can live a perfectly feminist ideal life. It's impossible. Her making a career for herself when she didn't have to and could have lived on her dad's money and married sooner is feminist and she doesn't have to completely abandon that in the end...but it's because her husband gave her permission once she gave that decision over to him.

This is a difficult topic because there are still plenty of women who do give up careers not so much because they got married but because they want to stay home with the kids. And no one wants to be told they're not making feminist choices and we really can't just dismiss everyone who does that as being anti-feminist in that way (and even if they are in that area it doesn't mean anything about other areas of their life) because we don't know the details.

I just know that in this film, her decision to conform does not feel feminist to me. And if the idea was to please audiences of the time who didn't want women too independent and were expecting them all to quit their jobs and return to being homemakers when the war ended then I don't feel it was meant to. I can't even say it's feminist necessarily she keeps working because then it might be a spot of feminism on Sam's end but she's just letting him make the choice for her.

Looking for feminism in the 1940s is just hard. Film noir movies tend to do it better, I think, though the narrative often punishes those kinds of women for their transgressions. Expecting a movie from 70 years ago to hold up to gender standards today is always going to be a fraught task.

i don't remember her giving up her career. i think she just agrees to be a bit less focused on her career and more on her marriage.