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Writing & Publishing There is no 'Mary Problem' in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

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There Is No Mary Problem in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’

George’s vision of his wife without him is essential to the film, but critics continue to miss its true—and profound—meaning.
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From the beginning, it is Mary who chooses George, not the other way around. In a scene from their childhood, she sits on the counter and whispers in his bad ear, “George Bailey, I’ll love you ’til the day I die,” while George, oblivious, drones on about coconuts. Reunited at the high school dance, her eyes fix on him with the loving, predatory gleam of a wifely panther. Throughout their strange, bittersweet courtship, it is she who chases him, as much as Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve, Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby, or Barbra Streisand in What’s Up, Doc? George, for his part, is as outraged, as protesting, as ultimately helpless as any of his counterparts. It is a screwball chump-chase transposed into the register of drama, with George playing the part of the chump.

Mary could marry any man in town. She doesn’t want to. She wants George. She takes the measure of George, seeing something in him that he can’t see, and which is perhaps only partially visible to us. What Mary sees in him does not reflect any of the abortive visions George has for himself.

It is Mary who sees the potential of the old house from the first, Mary who acquires it and patiently restores it over the years. It is Mary who sees the oncoming bank run as well as its solution, Mary who offers up their honeymoon money without wasting time either asking for permission or indulging in regrets. George’s life is shaped by a recurring characteristic act: the heroic acquiescence to duty when circumstances require it. But Mary sees the greater vision from the start. She is determined that George will lasso the moon, even if she is the only one who can see it in the sky.

It is certainly pleasant but not unduly extraordinary to be a popular and beautiful woman who can marry a rich and popular man if she chooses. It is less ordinary to see, with Mary’s perfect clarity and uncanny certainty, the life and man you want, and to choose it in the teeth of discouragement with all its disadvantages apparent, to persist single-mindedly in the face of hardship. It’s a Wonderful Life is, in part, the story of someone becoming, kicking and screaming, against all intentions and desires, a big man. Mary sees the big man in George from the first, because she is a big woman.

She is, as much as George, a profoundly unusual person laboring under her own personal destiny. In the world where George does not exist, she has not married not because she couldn’t, but because she does not want to. There is not a Mary-sized man in town, and Mary Hatch does not do anything just because it’s what might be expected of her. Her story in this counterfactual is a sad one, but it is not one of passive submission to circumstance.

To be chosen and known and loved by such a woman is not a small thing. It is seeing Mary without him that breaks George enough to make him ask for life, as it is her just anger at him that sends him into the most desperate phase of his downward spiral. When he chases the alternate Mary through the streets, his desperate cry is not “Mary! What have they done to you?” but “Don’t you know me? What’s happened to us?” If Mary does not know him, if Mary does not see who he really is, he must not exist indeed.
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This was so, so cool! Thanks for sharing this, it's an amazing viewpoint that I have never thought of before. You're right, that scene certainly has been misinterpreted by the critics for a long, long time.
 
So often we miss the subtleties, the little things that seem not to mean anything, when they are really the driving force. Like a tiny, vulnerable baby born in a backwater town to peasant parents.
 
Wow, what a terrific observation! I’ve never thought about it that way before, but you’ve certainly given me a different perspective. Not sure I can ever watch the movie the same way again. It also speaks well to the fact that sometimes people can see more in us than we can envision for ourselves, and how truly wonderful it is to have someone in your life that encourages and believes in you. Thanks, I really enjoyed this!
 
A Story Grid acquaintance wrote this about the film. (He hadn't seen it before this conversation. His observations are fascinating.)

Just finished watching the movie, as well as just read the short story it was based upon: The Greatest Gift.

There definitely is a Worldview (Education) Global, along with a Society as an External. Potter being the obvious villain (the Tyrant), and George (and by extension Mary) being the town’s savior. If Power/Impotence is the core value, that is definitely there driving the external.

With the global internal, as roadblocks form in George’s objective to get out of town and see the world, little by little meaning is sapped from him, culminating with the loss of $8,000 (misplaced by his Uncle), and told by Potter that he’s worth more dead than alive. Only when he’s faced with the possibility of having never existed, and how his absence impacts the people who were around him, does he realize the mistake of wishing he had never existed.

There is definitely a unrequited Love Story subplot involving Mary. Mary is definitely the one who chooses George, while George friend-zones Mary up until the call with Sam Wainwright.

I can see how the movie flopped when it first came out. Perhaps I’m too used to modern story structure, though given that it was originally released in 1946, I can’t really hold that against it. Still, the first half of the movie felt like an chronological expositional info dump, and it’s only around an hour and twenty minutes or so (when George’s uncle loses the money), that the movie starts to “get good”.

If I were to do a remake of the movie, I would stick a bit closer to the original short story. Have Act I open up with a distraught George, perhaps at the bar (or perhaps a bit early when the troubles begin: money goes missing). He stumbles away and heads for the bridge and the cold icy river. Clarence shows up as George is contemplating jumping in. Act I ends with George wishing he was never born.

Act II opens with George being thrust into the special world where George and Clarence step back through George’s life (much like the Ghosts and Scrooge do in A Christmas Carol), and we learn all the roadblocks placed in George’s path to his dreams and desires. Act II ends at the midpoint with George ‘resting his case’, that he didn’t accomplish “anything worthy”. Act III opens with Clarence telling him how he is wrong, and shows him the lives that he changed or influenced, leading up to his current dilemma, and legal troubles. Clarence also shows him all the times he stood up to Potter, preventing Potter from taking over the town.

Act IV opens with Clarence giving George his ‘wish’, and sending him on his way, telling George if he doesn’t like the world where he never existed, the bridge and the river will be waiting for him. George returns to town and sees how things have changed for the worse for everyone, and how no one knows who he is. The movie ends with George returning to the bridge, pleading for Clarence to return him back to his old life. George returns back to town amid news that the crisis that sent George to the bridge has been resolved.

Regarding the article, I would also agree that there is no ‘Mary Problem’.
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Yes. I watched yesterday afternoon before church. Great story and even more after reading the article.
 
Yeah, I stayed up watching it until like 2 a.m. on Friday night (got a late start, haha 😅) and had this post in mind as I saw it for the fifth time. Again, good insight and makes a lot of sense. I also read the short story for the first time last night. What a fantastic little read, and also, whoever cast Henry Travers as Clarence the angel was spot-on, as he fits the story's description to a tee.
 
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