This movie clearly shows that. Wilma ends up in a mental institution because of it. A good thing she got the help she needed. She even developed a romance with a doctor she met in there. It showed she was healing.
The more I study it, the greater the puzzle becomes.
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
Love left her vulnerable but she ended up in a sanitarium because she was conflicted about "nice" girls' not having sexual feelings. Her mother drummed into her not only the necessity of hanging on to her virginity (by no means a bad thing for a teenager) but that "nice" girls only gave in to their husbands to make them happy. Deanie had strong sexual (and according to her mother, depraved) feelings for Bud that had to remain unfulfilled. Bud, on the other hand, respected Deanie too much to sleep with her before marriage and so turned to the class slut, which catalyzed Deanie's breakdown. It wasn't love, it was maternal pressure, self-loathing, and guilt.
shareIt gives an interesting early 60's perspective to the idea of being "love - sick".🐭
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The failure of her teenage romance put her over the edge, but most people manage to cope with such emotional traumas without being committed to a mental hospital for two and a half years. She clearly was psychologically fragile to begin with.
shareSo true. I think most girls would have told Bud to go kick rocks when he cheated.
shareYes, and I think her breakdown was deeper than her sexual repression.
It was the small town. The fact that they couldn't go anywhere or do anything without people looking or gossiping about them/others. Both Bud and Deanie were really pressured by their parents expectations. Bud was looking pretty bad too until his father died.
It was also that this was Deanie's first love, that it all fell apart, and when I really look back, Bud didn't always treat her that well. He's always pushing her away, or shoving her down, slapping her around, and the whole movie she just looks at him with such...adoration, it's painful to watch.
By the end, I felt like she was growing up and getting stronger, forever changed by her experiences- but I also have the sense that she's probably going to keep needing psychiatric help. Just a hunch.