Stagecoach

What struck me the most while watching Stagecoach was everyone's treatment towards Dallas. Through out the movie I was unsure as to why everyone was treating her so mean. Both genders treated her like scum. Lucy, being a female too, wouldn't even look in her direction.  Usually, under high stress situations people of the same gender find solidarity in one another. The males of the movie also treated her horribly. Stereo typically, men of this time treated women with  the utmost respect and for them not to showcase this type of respect towards her was alarming. At first I thought that perhaps it was because she was not of the same class as the rest of them. Though something about this argument did not sit well with me. Still, i had no other reason to attribute their terrible attitudes towards her. Finally, at the end of the movie, I realized that Dallas was probably a prostitute. Now, from what we have spoken about in class - movies of a certain time period will speak about that society's point of view on certain matters. Judging from the time period of this movie, 1939 which so happens to coincide with the end of the great depression, it is safe to say that many women of this time were faced with the decision of going into prostitution or die of starvation. Society saw that this was a wide-spread plight as it was probably a decision that many women of this time had to take. This movie was probably a reflection on how society was trying to deal with this issue. More women than naught were being treated terribly because of their decision and as a response the movie tried to reassure them that their would be, in fact, a happy ending for them.