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and rip off each other’s clothes. The windows steam up, and a
hand leaves an imprint, fingers outstretched in ecstasy.
Minutes later they are cooled off when the ship has its
close encounter of the icy kind. Jack—young, vital, alive—
perishes in the frigid waters; but he has imparted to Rose a
gift of love, and thus of life. This tale of young lovers, held
apart by society, is a nautical “Romeo and Juliet,” a brief, pure
instant of love, tragically ended by death.
If Cameron’s Titanicis a love story for the ages, it was also
frozen in a particular place and in a particular time. Much as
Cameron spent millions to show the ship as it really was, he took
similar pains to give a convincing rendering of New York society,
especially its clothing, silverware, and social conventions.
Of the latter, the most significant for the story are the
elaborate rituals of Victorian courtship. Rose seeks to break
free from her impending marriage partly because she
despises her fiancé, but also because marriage to him consti-
tutes the final, irreversible step into the gilded cage of a soci-
ety lady. Jack’s presence at dinner with the “best” of society
underscores the shallow materialism of this upper crust and its
preoccupation with wealth, its absurd rules of etiquette, and
its repressive attitudes toward sexuality. Viewers of the movie,
looking through Rose’s eyes, may wonder how such rituals
ever came to be.
Some had existed for centuries. The idealization of
courtly love and pure womanhood was a commonplace of
medieval literature. In the early nineteenth century novelist
Jane Austen described the subtle interplay of money and
romance in England. But the rituals of New York society in
the Gilded Age were characterized by
sumptuous and public displays of
wealth—glittering balls and extravagant
“Grand Tours” of Europe.
This new mode of courtship was
largely the creation of Mrs. John Jacob
Astor, wife of one of New York’s wealthi-
est businessmen, and her friends. After
the Civil War, industrialization and
urbanization were generating new
wealth and destroying the old at a dizzy-
ing pace. While prominent businessmen
and investment bankers were devising
institutions to impose order on this cre-
ative industrial chaos, their wives were
regulating its social elite. They endeav-
ored to determine who should be admit-
ted to New York’s “best” families—and
who should not. They concluded that it
was not enough to be rich; the elite of
the nation must also adhere to high
standards of etiquette and decorum.J
ames Cameron’s Titanic(1997) was a blockbuster. He made
audiences feel what it was like to be on the ship. When the
deck tilted to the right, viewers leaned to the left; many
gasped as the ship plunged into the icy depths. What sent a
shiver down the spine was the knowledge that real people
had experienced what was being depicted on the screen.
Cameron well understood the audience’s craving to
relive a true story. The movie opens with footage of the
actual HMS Titanicon the floor of the Atlantic, fish gliding
silently through its barnacle-encrusted wreckage. Cameron
also spent scores of millions of dollars devising computer-
enhanced techniques to ensure that his Titaniclooked like
the one that went down in the North Atlantic on the night of
April 14–15, 1912.
But Cameron’s Titanicwas more than a disaster movie. It
was also the story of two young people who fall in love. The
romance begins when Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio), a struggling
artist, spots Rose (Kate Winslet), a wealthy socialite, climbing
over the railing and peering despondently into the water
below. Obliged to marry a contemptuous (and contemptible)
snob, she is miserable. Jack, from a lower deck, scrambles up
and persuades her to forgo the plunge.
As a reward for saving Rose, Jack is invited to dine with
Rose’s table. At dinner, Rose appraises Jack more carefully—and
is impressed. He looks good in a tuxedo, displays plenty of
moxie, and possesses artistic talent (“Jack, you see things!”). She
proposes that she pose for him in the nude. A few hours later
they venture below decks and, in anticipation of the courtship
rituals of future decades, locate an automobile, climb inside,
RE-VIEWING THE PAST
Titanic
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as lovers on the Titanic.