MovieChat Forums > Our Vines Have Tender Grapes Discussion > What was wrong with Ingeborg Jensen?

What was wrong with Ingeborg Jensen?


Just curious. The film doesn't go in to much detail.



Spiders! They want me to tapdance, I don't wanna tapdance!

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I believe she was part mentally-slow, part too isolated from people, domineered by her father, possibly emotionally/physically/sexually/verbally/mentally abused. That's a lot for one person, but it did happen more often than you think back then in isolated farming areas. My guess is that her father made her quite mad/crazy, and possibly he was the one who impregnated her. The family was so ashamed that the found some man--any man for that matter--to agree to marry her before she died during childbirth. She did die in childbirth, and so did the baby. How sad. Ashamed of something like that more than how ashamed of what he (probably/assumingly) did to her. Her family was just more interested in saving face rather than care for poor Ingebord.

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How do you know this? I just watched the film and the children in class say that Ingeborg got married and had a baby on the same day. Then she dies. With no explanation. Are you referring to the novel, because the film doesn't explain anything?

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IA, I think the poster is looking for too much sordidness in her story. I think Ingeborg was more like Johnny Belinda in which some jerk took advantage of her and she was unable to defend herself.

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and that's not sordid? while i think that's the most likely explination, there's always the possibility that the post was right about the father of Ingeborg's baby. Her father certainly acted the type of man that would do that.

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I'm certainly not implying that taking advantage of Ingebord was all right as long as it was not her father. But the implications of incest in a movie such as this, about a little girl and her life on a farm is really pushing the envelope and IMO unlikely.

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They couldn't really go into detail due to the Hays code, but hockeyvoodoo has pretty much got it, with the exception of "isolated farming areas" -- you can forget about that. This kind of thing has always happened, and was and is just as common in towns and cities as in rural areas, among the wealthy and well-off as among the poor, the highly educated as well as the ignorant.

Men like Jensen have always existed, and women too, who keep their children too close, convince them they're bad/stupid/crazy, overwork them, keep them out of school, and take advantage of them sexually (or permit it to happen while looking the other way). There may have been nothing at all wrong with Ingeborg other than her father.

An Ingeborg-like situation is portrayed in Agnes of God. You might also want to see Kings Row.

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I agree with jackgriffin1-1 - it seems like something was cut from the version I saw - the girl says she's having a baby and in the next scene someone mentions she's dead - with no explanation.

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Ingeborg didn't die in childbirth - remember the scene in school where some girls tell the teacher that Selma told them how nice it was the Ingeborg got married and gave birth the same day? Ingeborg was not dead at that point, though it happened soon after. I agree with Molly 31 - I got the same feeling, though it isn't confirmed in the movie, that Ingeborg's father was also the baby's father, and that they sucked in some other guy to marry her to save face. As far as what was wrong with Ingeborg, I thought maybe nothing was really wrong with her at all, or if she had mental deficiencies, they were normal. Her visions of colors made me think she was a misunderstood girl with an artist's soul (who, unfortunately, lived with a family who didn't understand and thus dismissed her abilities.) You tell someone often enough that they are "off" and they'll come to believe it. So sad! In a better family, her fate would have been completely different.

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Ingeborg's unexplained death death was strange- Was something left out of the TCM cut shown-or is that the way it was released?

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[deleted]

That's why I can't watch it. The first thing out of the gate is Selma's accidental killing of a squirrel. And the damn barn fire. And the cows. And Ingeborg. Sure, these things really happen, but my heart's been broken enough by things like that in real life, I don't need to go watching it too.

Let's just say that God doesn't believe in me.

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[deleted]

I watched it on Turner Classic this past weekend. I kept wondering about Inegborg Jensen. The school teacher had the most sympathy for her. Seems like she may had had some kind of mental retardation. But yeas, Natalie's character says that she had a baby and got married on the same day. Next thing we hear Ingeborg is dead!

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I was thinking perhaps an abortion happen and that's why she died. Maybe this is far-fetched but I was thinking her father impregnated her and he wanted to get rid of the baby so got an doctor to get rid of the baby and Selma died because of an botched abortion, and to save face the father said she was married and died the same day. I don't know if a stranger took advantage of her because the father hardly ever let her out of his sight.

Ingeborg had all the signs of an physically and sexually abused child. When Viola tried to touch her, Ingeborg was scared because she thought she was going to be hurt. She never knew the touch of love.

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The book doesn't go into a lot of detail either, except that she is different/slow ("Remember? at school? how nothing would be clear to you? how you couldn't remember what came after "D" when you tried to say the alphabet?") and the subject of beatings by her father. Her mother was also beaten. One of the townsmen occasionally beat up Ingeborg's father (Snake-eye) because he was outraged by the beatings Snake-eye inflicted on his wife. Ingeborg was the oldest of 16 children. The book doesn't really mention any of the others being beaten, but they probably were. She liked the fellow (Anton) who married her (he had gotten her pregnant) because he didn't beat her. He dies, it's unclear how, and Ingeborg is devastated, later dying "of a broken heart." A lot of the book is really lame--I think Dalton Trumbo did it a great service with his screenplay. But the thing to remember is that though the point of view shifts occasionally so we get the story the grownups see, it's really about Selma and what she sees and hears--and what we know of Ingeborg is not much more than Selma might have known or overheard.

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Thank you very much for this informative and helpful reply.

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Agreed, a very helpful reply by dglslvr. Excellent information and insights from someone who read the book.

I think the majority of the posters here have the essence of it right. Ingeborg might or might not have had some slight mental challenge, from dyslexia to very mild autism to just a sub-normal IQ. We're not meant to know more, at least in the film. In fact, it would have been unlikely that most of those specific conditions were diagnosable, much less well understood, in the 1940s- especially in a small, rural community.

The important things are that she's different; that she's some kind of an abuse victim, that she is a kind-hearted innocent who leads a sad and isolated life, that her tragic circumstances led directly to her death, and that her small community fails her. Even the little boy's (very understandable) refusal of a hug or comfort from her establishes her role in the story.

The Hays Code wouldn't have prevented us from learning that she died in childbirth or committed suicide, any more than it prevented us from knowing that she was pregnant and single. The very simple reason we don't learn more is explained directly by Agnes Moorehead's character: it's not something kids are supposed to understand. The story is told almost completely from Selma's point of view, with the exception of the love story, and other than that, only deals with the world in terms of Selma's understanding of it.

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