Last week I watched The Painted Veil and was swept away by the love story. Which at first wasn’t much of a love story.
Naomi Watts played Kitty, a vain, spoiled selfish young woman whose parents –her mother in particular—want to see her married. (I should add the story is set in the 1920s when even more emphasis was placed on women marrying.)
At a party, her father invites Dr. Walter Fane (played by Edward Norton), a quiet, reserved young man he hopes will catch Kitty’s eye. He doesn’t so much catch her eye as he does catch her off guard –with an immediate proposal.
For him it’s love at first sight. For Kitty, it’s love at first spite. (Directed at her mother, whom she’s sick of being nagged by.) Dr. Fane’s proposal is a way out. But that way leads very far out, all the way to China.
Walter works in Shanghai, and it’s there that Kitty falls for Charlie Townsend. Walter learns of their affair and gives Kitty an ultimatum –suffer the scorn of divorce or accompany him to a tiny village seized by a cholera epidemic where he’s volunteered to help.
Charlie’s married as well and refuses to divorce his wife to be with Kitty. She’s forced to go with Walter, who punishes her every way he can. For instance, to get to the village he could have taken a boat up the river. He opts for the long hot way by land. He doesn’t talk to Kitty unless she speaks to him first, and then his answers are perfunctory at best. He never looks at her.
Kitty’s miserable. She’s in an isolated, tiny village with no family or friends and a husband who hates her. Making matters worse are tensions between the English (which she and Walter are) and the Chinese.
Boredom drives Kitty to the convent which functions, among other things, as the village’s hospital and orphanage. It’s there that she learns she has more to offer the world than her good looks. She sets about helping the orphans and learns to respect herself. Which leads to gaining Walter’s respect.
Other than their meeting at the party and a walk to a flower shop, they never had much time to get to know one another before Walter proposed. There was no long engagement or extended honeymoon. But in this tiny epidemic-ridden Chinese village they come to know each other. She begins to see Walter for the kind, wonderful man he is. And she becomes the amazing, selfless woman he knew she could be.
They fall madly in love with each other.
I won’t tell you how it ends. That’s not the point. (Suffice it to say Death makes an appearance and rips the lovers apart in an untimely fashion.) The point is they married first and found love second. I believe to some extent that many marriages, even modern day ones, experience this.
Not that people have any reason to marry so quickly these days. But sometimes love only truly blooms after the initial physical attraction that brings two people together, the courtship, and the nuptials.
Why?
Because love grows over time. The more time and energy it’s fed, the deeper it’s roots grow. And sometimes it just so happens you can’t properly nurture Love the way it needs to be until after you’re married.
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