Not such a bitchfest as I supposed
Finally (at some expense) managed to get hold of a Region-2 compatible DVD of The Women (1939).
And discovered that while several of the women are nasty in assorted ways, everyone is not out to annexe somebody else's husband or put malicious gossip in circulation and there's even a fair degree of inter-female loyalty and supportiveness.
Okay, one is going to have difficulty in actually claiming as at all feminist a narrative world in which women's lives are all about hanging on to the husband you've got (in spite of any little problems of chasing other women, financial meanness, etc) or grabbing hold of someone else's. Even the Countess de Lave, who clearly is in no financial need of male support, richochets from terrible husband to terrible husband.
But if one accepts that either as an AU in which that is the premise to be accepted (in spite of the spinster ? lesbian writer Nancy Blake, who is, it is indicated, always bopping off to exotic parts to write books about them) or as a conventional stylisation of social relations for aesthetic purposes within 1930s Hollywood 'women's film' parameters, it does work.
(Even if one thinks, surely a woman as terribly morally worthy as Mary would not just be pursuing the trivial round of beauty parlour, lunch parties, etc, and would be out doing some kind of volunteer good work?)
I don't think one can claim (as I think I have seen?) that it's all about CLASS and closing ranks against wouldbe upward socially-mobile perfume-counter salesgirls, because Miriam Aarons (Paulette Goddard) is a chorus-girl who makes off with Sylvia's husband (to cheers all round) and is pretty much a good egg with the earthy wisdom derived from a hard life.
I.e. is Crystal's final vituperation justifiable, given that, as far as kennel metaphors go, she has demonstrated herself Queen Bitch throughout? Or just a final spitting of venom?
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