by Jeanne Williams

Created on: October 07, 2008

You may not be old enough to have seen them in the theatre, but you've probably caught a few of them on TV-maternal melodramas, movies produced from the 1930s and 1940s that center around a mother's devotion to her child. You probably even remember how the stories go: A young woman falls in love with a man who's too rich or too old or too married to be an appropriate suitor. Sometimes, the couple marries (Stella Dallas is a good example of that); in others, they have a brief affair (as in Letter From an Unknown Woman). Inevitably, however, the woman gets pregnant, the man leaves her, and the child replaces the lover in her affections. But her devotion to her child is complete, and she willingly sacrifices her own happiness for her child's sake.

Stella Dallas is a classic maternal melodramaso classic, in fact, that three versions of the film exist (along with a radio series and a novel). In the film, Stella Martin marries aristocratic Stephen Dallas after a brief courtship, but the marriage quickly falls apart. Stephen moves to New York while Stella remains in Massachusetts to raise their daughter Laurel. Following a disastrous holiday at a posh resort (Stella's poor fashion sense makes her an object of ridicule), Stella realizes that she must send her teenaged daughter off to be raised by Stephen's new wife. The film's famous ending shows Stella standing in the rain behind the gates of her ex-husband's home, just another anonymous spectator watching Laurel's wedding to a properly aristocratic young man.

The popular TV series Gilmore Girls would seem to have little in common with movies like Stella Dallas. But just look behind the rapid-fire dialogue, the pop culture references and the wacky denizens of Stars Hollow and the similarities are downright eerie. Just like a 1940s heroine, Lorelai Gilmore is a single mother who's completely devoted to daughter Rory. Like Stella and her fellow movie moms, Lorelai has made enormous sacrifices for her child. The series begins, in fact, with Lorelai's requesting a loan from her well-to-do parents so that Rory can attend a prestigious private school. (That may not sound like a sacrifice to you, but we learn that Lorelai has been estranged from her parents since Rory's birth. Being indebted to Richard and Emily Gilmore is not an easy thing for Lorelai to accept.)

As a product of a modern era, however, Gilmore Girls takes an overall cheerier attitude toward motherhood than films like Stella Dallas. Stella and Laurel form

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>