Down East and What Society

¶ … Down East and What Society Was Like Then to really enjoy and understand a silent film like D.W. Griffith's Way Down East, filmed in 1920, you have to be willing to put yourself into a time warp and allow yourself to be transported back to living at that time.

The movie was made just at the end of the Victorian era and just before the social/sexual revolution of the 1920s.

In order to identify with the characters, and experience what it would be like to be them, you have to understand what their lives were like and what it was like to live at that time. What today may seem like a corny story with a silly conflict (Making Movies, 1920 web site) portrays what was a very serious issue then. The "fallen woman," that is, a women who had sex before marriage, was a pariah, rejected by all "decent" people as unfit for society. Those other women who might have been sympathetic to the fallen woman's plight didn't dare to be friendly with a woman who had a "reputation" for immorality, for fear they too would be labeled by association.

To men she was thereafter good for only one thing, illicit sex.

Men were believed to be creatures of passion, which they could not control, while decent women supposedly had no sexual feelings. Therefore, women were expected to be "pure" and much more moral than men are because indecent sexual feelings in a woman didn't exist. Women, because they were inherently more moral and less sexual, were held responsible for whatever happened sexually and expected to maintain control over the man's behavior (Welter, 1983). Griffith comments in the beginning of the movie that "the man-animal has not reached this high estate [that women have attained]." The society in which he lived was rapidly shifting from agricultural to industrial and urbanized, but still with a strong double standard, as pictured by D.W. Griffith throughout the film. The unfairness and injustice of a double standard, one standard for men and another for women, is the main message of the film. And the story is taking place at a time when women, moving to urban areas to get work, are being exposed to "worldliness" and the animal nature of men.

Anna Moore is a model of "true womanhood" in the Victorian sense (Welter, 1983). Purity and constancy are considered prime virtues, and she is portrayed as this type of woman. Griffith sees the ideal Victorian woman as delicate, sweet, innocent, very domestic, and sheltered from evil and the corruption of the real world. Anna, when she comes to Boston, is exactly like this. Ironically, it is precisely because of these virtues that idle, rich Lennox Sanderson, a sly, conniving womanizer, is attracted to her and determined he will have his way with her. He sees seducing her as an adventure and doesn't care that trusting him will ruin her.

He tricks her by arranging for a fake wedding ceremony, and because she is infatuated by him and impressed with his sophisticated ways, she consents to marry him.

At the hotel where he takes her after the fake ceremony, Anna is demure, modest, and shy about her new role as a wife. She is excited by the gorgeous wedding-night negligee, which Sanderson presents to her in a gift box and hugs him spontaneously and affectionately. She goes into another room and puts the negligee on, then returns shyly, looking extremely beautiful (almost ethereal) but nervous and embarrassed, as though she thinks she is not covered up quite enough -- exhibiting all the qualities Griffith's society expects a good woman to be, qualities that predict she will be an "angel in the house" and a trusting, obedient wife (Welter, 1983).

Before consenting to engaging in sex with him, she says, "My husband. My husband," as though she is telling herself it's okay, it's legal, she can do this because she is married now and it will not make her a bad woman. At that point, Sanderson seems to experience his conscience for a few moments, but then he glances at her ankles and gives in to his desire.

Griffith implies in this scene that the ideal Victorian woman, who is pious, pure, domestic, and obedient (Welter, 1983), is also the most vulnerable to a conniving seducer like Sanderson. She trusts Sanderson, her husband, because she too believes in the myth of true womanhood and that as her husband he will be her protector from the harshness and corruption of the world. She doesn't realize he is the corrupt world. He represents all the evil forces that would exploit and use a sheltered, naive woman.

In a few weeks Sanderson grows bored with her, of course, and by that time she is pregnant. His attitude toward her then is not only cold but also cruel, just when she is the most vulnerable and helpless. Anna has her baby alone in a rented room with only the town doctor to help her. The landlady, Maria Poole, is hostile and suspicious because no husband in evidence. The baby dies in a heartbreaking scene in which Anna, grief-stricken, displays the tenderest of mother love for it, as well as piety when she prays and baptizes the infant. No sooner is the baby dead than the landlady tells Anna, "Everybody's talking about you having no husband. I guess you'll have to leave." Anna is now a "fallen woman" and society's outcast. It doesn't matter that Anna was tricked into thinking she was married. The only thing important to society is that she had sex, had a baby, and had no husband.

Anna goes to a small town and finds work in the home of the Bartletts, who are God-fearing, honest country people. Griffith seems to favor country people as less corrupted by riches, idleness, and jaded sophistication. Country people are more natural, real, even funny in their humanness. Squire Bartlett, a pious man, is the "richest farmer in the neighborhood." His son David Bartlett who has a true heart, falls in love with Anna. In fact, everyone in the household loves her. Unfortunately, the wicked Sanderson visits his summer estate nearby, and when he discovers she is there tells her she must leave. When she doesn't, he threatens to tell the Squire about their relationship.

In an emotional scene towards the climax of the film, Anna is sitting in a rocking chair by the fire sewing when Sanderson comes in and finds her alone. He tells her she must go, but she refuses. He says, "Suppose they find out about your past life. You'd have to get out then."

Anna angrily challenges him: "Suppose they find out about YOUR past life." Sanderson laughs and says, "It's different with a MAN. He's supposed to sow his wild oats." This is a clear statement of the double standard.

When David, upstairs, overhears Sanderson and Anna's angry voices in the parlor, he comes to investigate. After Sanderson is gone, he asks Anna, "Does Lennox Sanderson mean anything to you?" She tries to avoid the question by asking another, "Why do you ask such a question?" And he tells her he can't keep silent any longer. "I love you. I want you to be my wife." Anna becomes agitated and upset and says, "I can never be ANY MAN'S WIFE." Anna is "spoiled merchandize." She assumes for good reason that David will not want her if he finds out she is not a virgin. This was part of the double standard of the time. A man would have sex with a woman (eagerly) if she allowed it, but he would not want to marry her or have her for a wife. Men only wanted to marry "good" girls. Women who were not virgins were considered unmarriageable, which is why Anna says she can never marry anyone.

David offers true love but Anna cannot accept it. She cannot lie to him because she loves him and because she is basically an honest person. If she were to let him think she is pure, and then he found out that she wasn't, he wouldn't want her and he might hate her: "At last the great overwhelming love -- only to be halted by the stark ghosts of her past." And she can't be forgiven for her sin of not being pure. When she asks the Squire, "Suppose, Squire, I had been like you suspected when you first saw me. Would there have been any hope of forgiveness?" He answers, "When the law's broke, it's broke, ain't it? A wrong's a wrong, and nothin' can make it right."