I'm not looking at it through modern eyes - I'm looking at it through human eyes! The film does not try and pretend that Rose is not breaking the societal rules of the time - it is quite clear she is. Something is not OK just because it is 'normal' if it is abusive. Like I said in my first post, if we didn't have the people who were brave enough to rebel against societal norms then those norms would never have changed. No vote for women, no end to slavery, no end to child labour, no recognition of conjugal rape.
It is the people of the past looking at their own societal norms and saying 'no' that leads to progress.
Not that I'm wanting to give credit to Titanic, which is a pretty silly love story in a pretty silly film, for being some great champion of progress and that Rose is some kind of Rosa Parks ... of course not. But nevertheless Cal is objectively unpleasant and abusive (no matter how normal that would be) and Rose is so depressed by the the thought of her life with him she is driven to suicide. And anyone who looks at this story and sides with Cal is ... either wilfully misunderstanding or just doesn't like women very much.
Literally everyone was forced into marriage then, it was the social norm and not an excuse.
Ah ... so because it was normal for women to be sold into marriage - any woman who just didn't meekly accept her lot is therefore in the wrong? And even 100 years later we should criticise her actions, because she broke society's rules, rules we now recognise as being unfair. Because, at the time, other people thought it was OK to treat her this way.
Yes - women were married to men they didn't love who treated them cruelly, the same was probably true for her mother. But you seem to think that an unfair societal norm is a reason Rose should shut up and embrace her own unhappiness?
Is this what you would say to a woman being forced into an arranged marriage today, if she came from a culture where such a thing was still the norm? It happens to other women too?
The 'realism' of the film, the period detail any of that is neither here nor there - if you are trying to claim that a woman is in the wrong for rebelling against her arranged marriage then you are saying women are wrong for rebelling against arranged marriages. The dressing it is given is immaterial.
Criticising characters set in period dramas as being unrealistically modern is fine. But that isn't the criticism you had - that Rose was too modern. Your criticism was that she was 'cheating' on the man who had bought her as a teen bride and being careless with the financial burden of the woman who sold her.
And you can't hide behind 'that was the way it was at the time'. Yes it was. Yes they depict that. But your criticism should still be for Cal and Ruth's behaviour - not for Rose's - as you are not watching it in 1912- nor was it a film made for a 1912 audience.
Was Rose too modern - fair question. Was she the one in the wrong? No she fucking wasn't.