Titanic 1997. Aibu to not realise how young Ruth was and that I don’t think Cal was that bad?

[phatt]

So it’s been a few years since I watched Titanic and always assumed that Ruth was in her 60s but she’s actually late 30s/early 40s. So she could have also got re-married (less likely but still a possibility.)

I know I’ll get flamed for this but I don’t think Cal was an outright villain. He did attempt to connect with Rose and love her but for his fiancé to be socialising with people in third class (when social standing was huge) and to blatantly cheat on him very openly then you can see why he’d be pissed off.

Also I’m judging him by Edwardian standards and not modern day. Obviously he did acts that made him a “bad” person as well.

Yes that’s fair. Cal was quite hot. I’m also going through Mr Andrews on the table.*
*
100% Mr Andrews

Cal literally says: ‘My wife in practice if not yet by law, so you will honor me’.

Definitely sleeping together.

My favourite movie of all time. Rose will always have a special place in my heart. She was a commoner deep down in her heart 😂. I can very much relate. I am shocked to realise how young Ruth was though. Loved her.

Life may have taken me into different circles but I’m still that little girl from the council estate who would 100 percent be dancing on the bottom deck drinking pints until I was smashed. ⛴️ 🍺.

No, that’s what I thought. He wanted her virginity, and then she gave it to Leo, which tipped him over the edge completely.

I thought Rose and Cal were definitely sleeping together. Not only does he say “I thought you would have come to me last night” which makes me think it was something to be expected/happened before but he also says when he flips the table over during their big row “you may not be my wife in law but you are in practice” not sure if that was the exact line but pretty close!

Hell yes. Victor Garber (I love Victor Garber!) was beautiful back then. That said, so was the original Thomas Andrews, although the two men look nothing alike.

I thought this was a sensitive portrayal of a man who was loved even by his employees, a true rarity back then. Stoking, for one, must have been a horrible, hot, dirty job. Andrews was considered enough to install a water fountain in the stokers' work areas: the only one to have given a thought to the comfort of the working classes. The White Star crew on the ship clubbed together to buy him presents to thank him for his courtesy to them. He also spent the two hours since becoming aware the ship was mortally stricken, sweeping the ship, herding women into the lifeboats and eventually, when he could do nothing more, throwing steamer chairs overboard to act as flotation aids to those in the water.

He sounded a really lovely human being and was a great loss.

Meant 'considerate', not considered!

Also, of course Ruth doesn't want to work as a seamstress (or 'seamstress'). That wasn't her being an awful person, it was human nature. It would be a huge scandal for her and Rose to be beggared and to have to do manual labour (or sell their bodies) to keep a roof over their heads, and presumably the story of how Rose's dead dad blew the money would be shameful and embarrassing as well if it got out. Plus, y'know, nobody likes a massive drop in standard of living and social status. Being perfectly happy, content and stable in a lifetime in a low-status manual job is very different psychologically to having to take a low-status manual job after a lifetime as an aristocratic woman who never expected to work. Having no choice but to marry a rich dude is no picnic. Didn't any of you read your Wharton and Austen?

I interpreted that whole tension as coming from Rose continuing to hold him off physically, but on the voyage the pressure was ramping up. The scene with the diamond was the more powerful because his comment 'you can have anything you like if you don't deny me' was his way of trying to buy his way into her bed with material possessions. At the same time, he's not only placing restrictions on her external deportment and behaviour, but has even taken to ordering her food for her.

The diamond scene was the more powerful because it's a key turning point in her gleaning a sense that her time was running out, and once they were married she'd be compelled to accept him into her bed and submit to his control. The voyage itself presented an excellent opportunity for him to wear her down.

This also makes it more believable that Rose, the cossetted, spoiled daughter of a once-wealthy family, should have made the conscious decision to give up the life to which she'd been accustomed, however awful the husband, and run off with a guy who was penniless.

Were she and Cal already sleeping together, a lot of that tension would have been absent IMO.

I had failed to twig this too! Tell me more?!

Ruth is no different to Mrs Bennett.

Why. I have a (late) teenager and I’m 60. It happens.

OP, thank you for starting this thread. Enjoyable looking at different interpretations, meanings, seamstresses etc as I procrastinate on a Friday afternoon!

I also think it was cruel to let her mum believe she was dead, but maybe she was trying to help her in a way- she would have possibly have got some sort of life insurance or pay out from Rose being declared lost to the Titanic?

Curious as to how then she made it with a totally false identity though since Rose Dawson never existed, and you’d think her mum might have had a look through the passenger list, saw a surviving Rose and thought…I wonder…

I mean Cal was a git obviously but different times. If I'd been Rose I'd have married him for sure. Jack was a terrible prospect. They were a brief infatuation. They wouldn't have lasted anyway.

Wow, when I went to see the re-release at the cinema I could have written this post afterwards! I agree with you completely and while my DM was appalled I thought that of Cal - I was having the same social standing conversation with friends who were with me when we saw it the first time round. Cal was not the villain she was making a fool out of him and Lovejoy - and Rose’s complaints and personality have not aged well.

I agree with this! Very cruel to let her mother think she had drowned and their last goodbye was her mother screaming for her. I’m surprised Cal even wanted to marry Rose at times.

BadSkiingMum I was also thinking about "The House of Mirth" especially in relation to all the comments about seamstress being a euphermism

I thought she was a bit thick to not realise he actually survived. Even years later she didn't recognise him when they did Revolutionary road together. Her heart certainly did not go on.

Any particular reason for the timing of your thread? Quite convenient.

I’m also going through Mr Andrews on the table.

I went home from that movie and told my late mum I had located her next husband.

She thoroughly approved of the match when I showed her a photo and didn’t mind the idea of an arranged marriage.

Unfortunately, my dastardly plans were foiled by Victor Garber turning out to be gay and liking them half his age. 😰

Also, I think we can irrevocably settle it here ONCE AND FOR that that plank was easily big enough for the both of them.

Actually I just remembered - a fire broke out in my local cinema during one of the first screenings. My friend was there. It was during the really scary escaping/ sinking scenes and when people began to smell the smoke they thought it was some sort of special effect. No one was injured but people were genuinely very shook.

Completely agree.

But I also think Elizabeth and Jane were lucky and Mrs Bennett was right. Miss Bates in Emma could have been their future.

Really? Where did the term slumming come from then...