MovieChat Forums > My Reputation (1946) Discussion > What did Jessica Drummond do that was so...

What did Jessica Drummond do that was so scandalous?


Her husband passed away. She was lonely and at loose ends, so after a few months of mourning she struck up a friendship with a serviceman. By the end of the film she hadn't even slept with him yet. So what's the big deal? It wasn't as if she was *beep* half the guys in town!

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She's supposed to hold on to her husband's memory for the rest of her life, live only for her boys and obey her mother in everything. She's not supposed to do anything for herself --how could you even think such a thing!

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The gossip mongers try to make it seem like they're concerned about Jessica, the boys, and the memory of her dead husband but it's not true. Their real concern is themselves, society, and their role in it.

Any unmarried woman is a threat to the married ones in the community but that is especially true of divorced and widowed women. Unlike the single women, who were expected to save themselves for marriage, the divorced and widowed women have experienced and presumably enjoyed sex. It's unlikely they'll go without.

The wives worry their husbands will stray (as one already tried). The husbands worry their wives may realize they can do without them and would rather be free like the unmarried women. The elders of the community worry they will lose control. Their civilized society will frazzle and fall apart. The children will have the wrong examples to follow and will perpetrate the same behaviors. The children worry their mothers will neglect them. Having lost their fathers, they will have nowhere to turn and no one left.

The way most people looked at life back then and to some extent even now, once we lose our way, our moral compass; when everyone starts doing whatever they want, with no regard for the impact their actions have on society, we're all doomed. It's not that they wanted Jessica to be alone and unhappy for the rest of her life. She just had to go about it the 'right' or 'proper' way. Had she decided to re-marry it would have been fine. Her accountant was a possible husband even her mom suggested but her boyfriend made it clear marriage was not in the cards for him - ever. Even if they weren't sleeping together, staying out until all hours, being together in each other’s residences, or going away together on trips out of town, gave people the impression that was happening. An impression in the hand of a gossip is the same as the truth. Besides, at that rate, being together so much it would have been a matter of time before they did get intimate.

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