what was deanie's mental illness?

Jane Doe, you're making me wonder what your problem is. Seriously. I haven't seen a single person on here arrogantly badmouth anything. Observations about how times have changed aren't the same as badmouthing.

There have been many occasions when I've wished that I lived in a simpler, more innocent time. But the fact is, times were never as innocent as we like to look back and think they were, even if we lived them. And frequently the line between innocence and ignorance was blurred. Do we really want to have those times back?

I feel that our society is disgustingly overexposed to sex. But would I go back to a time when women had no choice but to bear child after child, regardless of whether they chould afford it or were physically able to care for it? Would I go back to a time of women and girls bleeding to death from self-performed abortions that they resorted to out of fear and panic? Fear of social retribution for the unwed or the inability to care for yet another child? I don't think so, even if it meant I wouldn't be bombarded by sex on every magazine cover in the supermarket checkout anymore.

And I happen to enjoy the fact that my husband considers my pleasure when we're intimate, and is considerate of how I'm feeling, instead of looking at intercourse as the marital duty I have to perform but he gets pleasure from. Sue me.

It's hard to have a dialogue with people who refuse to embrace an historical perspective. Geez... Many things happened in the past that we can't understand. Women couldn't vote once. The fact that Prohibition was an idea that actually was turned into a Constitutional Amendment is laughable, now. As will future generations laugh when marijuana becomes accepted. Once upon a time men beat their wives and got away with it. Women were tared and feathered. Once people owned slaves. The list goes on. This movie is one story about particular characters that illustrate morays of a time gone by. Women from past eras were often put in psycho wards if they simply didn't behave the way society thought was appropriate. A strong, fearless personality could get you shock treatment in the right circumstances. If say your parents were of that mindset or if you were married and the husband wanted to exercise that control. And it wasn't just women although it was rarer for men. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is about that. McMurphy was not insane. (SPOILER) He was a non-conformist with intense anger issues. He did not deserve a lobotomy. He needed therapy, and anger management. But society was once repressive, and some would argue still is, and regularly people's liberties were violated.

That said, Deenie was not crazy. A few of you have over-analyzed her. You all have also completely let Bud off the hook. Basically, he dumped her because she wouldn't put out. She loved him, or at least thought she did. However, Bud was a normal red-blooded American white male teenager who was rich, good-looking as sin, privileged, spoiled rotten by his father and the other girls. Bud didn't have to wait for anything. Of course, Bud also had issues himself.

A big part of Deenie's problem was the 'sin' of pride. There's a key scene at the beginning of the film when Deenie, arm and arm with Bud is not just bursting with pride, but literally preening and swollen with herself in a very public way. SHE, had Bud, who was a HUGE catch. That made her SPECIAL and set her above the other girls who were clearly jealous and envious as teenaged girls and women in general are. And Deenie more than relished this.

Losing Bud was a very PUBLIC humiliation for Deenie. And was a very big part of this. Add to that, the strong sexual desires she was experiencing as well as being trapped with a mother who was a sexual puritan in a time when women were viewed as Madonnas or Whores/Sluts. All those thing combined to cause a breaking point. Deenie, in today's world would have been given meds and therapy.

I laugh at those who scoff at this. The sexually active and aggressive girls today should stop and think about the girls who cut themselves, are anorexic, bulemic, drug addicted, depressed and on medication and violent. An argument could be made that all the sexual liberation in the world has changed very little. Especially when you read about the girls who have committed suicide over sexting and explicit photos, or the poor girl who was duped on myspace by a friend's mother due to a vendetta. Or how about the girls who over indulge in sex until they reach an age when men no longer find them desirable. And what about the female teachers who are predatory on their students. So much for laughing at women of past generations who were sexually repressed. It's just a different end of the spectrum.

The truth is women are emotional creatures. And during the hormonal teenage years, girls are like an exposed nerve. A lot of boys today are too. So really not much has changed on that level. Splendor in the Grass is about teenage angst in the extreme, set in the 1920s and using the morality of that era as a catalyst.

Someone upthread posted the following:

"I mean sex is goooood and healthy and important; but didn't their lives have other facets, activities, goals, and ambitions to balance out the horomones? Your life is just beginning when you're 18, it's not the culmination."

This sums up the problem. And it's a problem today as well. Teens who have no goals, ambitions, hobbies, etc. will always act out in the extreme. Intense focus on texting, the Internet, sexuality, video games, socializing, drugs, etc. will lead to self-destruction if not balanced. This is where parenting plays a huge role. A large part of both Deenie and Bud's problem was poor parenting.

The key to this movie is the woman Bud chose in the end. She was a second generation from a large immigrant family filled with love and support. She was passionate by nature and culture and it was what Bud needed. In the end their life is not a fairytale romance either. It's real life without the hormonal emotions of youth. For Deenie going to see Bud was putting closure to the experience. Which is what the passage in Wordsworth's poem is about. Our wistful longing for the intense splendor of our youth, which can never be re-experienced in that way.

Instead of ridiculing the movie, this movie is a metaphor and could be used to teach young people a simple truth that is always hidden from them: yes, there is life after your teenage years. Everything you feel now will change. You have to find ways to cope during these years because you will, like Deenie survive.

"Nervous breakdown" may be a somewhat outdated term, but it still happens to people. It is basically when a mental illness such as depression, OCD, etc, becomes so overwhelming that you cannot function.
Deanie was heartbroken, young and depressed. I never thought she had a "mental illness" just she was depressed, very depressed. On a side note, Bud was an ass...



"Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble."