Factual error: Rose mentions Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud's ideas on the male preoccupation with size to Bruce. However this is 1912, and Freud did not publish the work relating to this until 1920 in "Beyond The Pleasure Principle." Also, up until 1919, Freud relied solely on data from women. (00:33:40)
Titanic (1997)
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Directed by: James Cameron
Starring: Kathy Bates, Bill Paxton, Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Billy Zane, Victor Garber, Bernard Hill
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Lewis Bodine: We never found anything on Jack. There's no record of him at all.
Rose Calvert: No, there wouldn't be, would there? And I've never spoken of him until now. Not to anyone, not even your grandfather. A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets. But now you know there was a man named Jack Dawson. And that he saved me. In every way that a person can be saved. I don't even have a picture of him. He exists now, only in my memory.
Trivia: Gloria Stuart was the oldest person ever to receive an Oscar nomination for her role in "Titanic". At 87, she was also the only person on the set who was alive at the time of the real "Titanic" disaster.
Question: What happened to Rose's mother after the sinking? I'm curious because she made it very clear while she was lacing up Rose's corset, that she was entirely dependent on Rose's match with Cal to survive. Whether she was exaggerating or not, she made the statement that she would be poor and in the workhouses if not for the marriage and Cal's fortune to support them. Obviously, since Rose is presumed dead after the sinking, she did not marry Cal and her mother was not able to benefit from his money. So would she then, in fact, end up poor and in the workhouses as she said? Rose didn't just abandon Cal and that lifestyle to start anew, she also had to abandon her mother. So did she leave her mother to be a poor and squandering worker? At the end of the movie, Rose gives her account of Cal and what happened to him in the following years, but never anything about her mother. I realize this question would probably be more speculation than a factual answer, but I just wondered if there were some clues at the end that I maybe didn't pick up on or if there were some "DVD bonus" or behind the scenes I haven't seen that answered this.
Answer: I've wondered that too. I think it was easier to find out what happened to Cal because she said "it was in all the papers." As for her mother, it likely would have only been in the papers local to where she lived when she passed away. This was in an era before television and of course way before the internet. So I think the only way Rose would have been able to keep track of her mom would have been to live in the area or do some investigation. It seems unlikely she wanted to do either one, especially since it would have 'given it away" that Rose had survived in the first place. I agree with the other statements that Cal would have felt obligated to take care of her, and that the people she owed money to would have tried to collect on it as it would have been in "bad form" under the circumstances.
Answer: Her mother's big problem was a heap of debts. It would have looked badly on the debt collectors to go hovering around her after what was assumed to have happened, and in a society where one's reputation was valued highly. They probably simply gave her a degree of debt forgiveness in her bereavement, then Cal, insurance, and even her Mother herself taking a second (rich) husband could've taken care of what was left.
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Chosen answer: Because she is considered, in a minor sense, a "villain" in this film for forcing her daughter into a loveless arranged marriage to satisfy her personal wants, most fans probably speculate that she became a poor and penniless seamstress and lived out her life working in a factory. Of course, this is possible, without the financial security of the arranged marriage between Cal and Rose. However, it is difficult to believe that a woman of such status, and who has so many wealthy and powerful friends, would be allowed to languish in abject poverty doing menial labors. I would tend to believe that she probably sold a number of her possessions for money (she did mention that as part of the humiliation she would face if Rose were to refuse Cal's affections), and probably lived off the kindness of others. Given that her daughter was betrothed to a Hockley, his family might have felt an obligation to assist her in finding a suitable living arrangement and a situation for employment. It is also possible that she re-married into wealth. However, this is more unlikely, mainly because back in 1912, it was considered scandalous to re-marry, especially at Ruth's age. However, since Ruth does not make an appearance after surviving the sinking of the Titanic in a lifeboat number 6 (next to Molly Brown), nor is she mentioned again, her fate is left unknown and subject only to speculation.
Michael Albert
In that era, with Rose betrothed to Call, Cal would most definitely have provided for Ruth in the lifestyle she was accustomed to. As Cal angrily raged at Rose the morning after her excursion below decks, "You are my wife in custom if not yet in practice ", thus, society would have viewed him a villain had he not cared for Ruth once it was assumed Rose was dead.