DEATH AND NEW LIFE: A VIEW OF SOUTHERN WOMEN

SHELBY EATENTON Latcherie (Julia Roberts) is the centerpiece of this film that deals with the bonds of women that form and strengthen through the tragedies and celebrations of life. Shelby is a woman who is very ill but is willing to risk everything to have a baby of her own. M’Lynn Eatenton (Sally Field), Shelby’s mother is the overprotective second in command, whose feelings and ideologies are almost always at center stage of the film. The glue that holds it all together is Clairee Belcher (Olympia Dukakis), a woman of great wealth and respect, one who is never to deny a helping hand or staunch criticism. “Steel Magnolias” tends to center around these women (and a few other key females) and their affairs, and while it is about their relationships with one another, most of what they do and say is reactionary to the real-life events of Shelby.

Shelby’s marriage at the beginning of the film introduces us to the fragility of her character. We see that she is fickle in love as just days before her nuptials, she, in a minor fight with her fiancé, told him that she would not marry him. However we get the first real glimpse into the issues that would stand front and center in the film as she discusses this incident at Truvy’s (Dolly Parton) beauty shop when Shelby begins to go into an insulin shock. We see that M’Lynn has the deep seeded need to mother Shelby, and that Clairee is the true strength and wisdom of the collection, and that Shelby, while a loving daughter, has a fierce independent streak that contains little room for her own well-being.

Eventually, Shelby gets pregnant, against the advice of doctors and her mother’s wishes. The birth goes over just fine, but in the first year of the child’s life, Shelby must continually undergo dialysis treatments to help her now failing kidneys which took too much abuse in the birth. This was a risk she knew was possible but put aside in the hopes of having some piece of immortality (something to which I can not relate due to the fact that I plan on never having children). Her mother with her ever present need to be the savior of course volunteers a kidney in the hopes of protecting not only her child, but her grandchild. This act of utter selflessness is a constant t theme throughout the movie of the either real, or purely emotional, mother-daughter dynamics that persist throughout the film. There is a strong sense throughout that it is in the nurturing and true caring of another that women are truly connected, and that whether or not one agrees completely with the choices or beliefs of another in the group, their ties are everlasting.

All of this comes together at the end when, after falling into a coma, Shelby passes away, and during M’Lynn’s time of deepest sorrow, Clairee takes it upon herself to make her smile so as to keep what parts of the group that are still around happy and mentally healthy. When M’Lynn could no longer be a mother to her daughter, she once again became the daughter, and the feminine bond ended up as strong as ever. You knew that no matter what the tragedy that these women of the south, these magnolias, would stay bonded as strong as steel.